ALAC ExCom 17.08.2010 Transcript

>>>> **
>>>> Cheryl Langdon-Orr: All right, so if Carlton is in – my headset – let’s just start going through the summary minutes. First of all before we jump into that, is there anything that anyone wants to add under any other business? It is a taste of any other business that we will be talking about, and we might move that forward in front of our discussion with Kevin so we can finish with that, so I’ll suggest a change in the order.
>>>> We can always reopen if need be, but there’s some matters about what we want to put into the annual report that Heidi would like to discuss with us, and I think we should do that before we jump into the wonderful world of travel. So is there any other any other business?
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Yes, I have a small discussion item on a large item that I just sent out to the Excom, of a draft rule for the rules of procedure on At-Large for approval of Board member selection.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay. So that will be a speaking – we’re not discussing that specifically at any other point. Okay, we’ll bring that in as well.
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>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*One point is that for the meeting today we get through the list of the all names of people and is the outside work up to date and I would like very much that we reach a decision taken by the GNSO whether we will say the same or we say not the same, but we need to say something, because I don’t know why the rules for one organization must apply to everybody because they organized the working group, but it’s a subjective decision.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Sorry, I don’t understand the question, Sebastian. What is the –
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>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*They assure us at the beginning of each call, it says that the Chair of the call will ask each participant to say if their SOI is up to date or not and if it changed from the last week, it takes today a lot of time because it was the first time, but the question is how we are under that as it is new rules from the GNSO.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Well, the new rules from the GNSO actually just call for continuous disclosure, which is something that I pushed very hard to get in. Continuous disclosure, you have an item that says if there are any changes in the SOI anyone needs to report on, if there are a lot of them on the one day, then so it is, but it would never happen a second time though, unless there are mass changes in what people do and who they are working for.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Cheryl, my understanding, though I haven’t gone back to look at the document, and certainly every interpretation of it is there must be a roll call of each person asking is yours still current.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Ah, well something’s called up every (inaudible 0:03:21.2).
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Yes, well. I need to check whether those are indeed the words there, I haven’t yet. It is a rather intrusive rule, but –
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*The terminology is definitely continuous disclosure. If as chair, that is how they want to do it, then if they’ve adopted the rules, then there’s also the rules where members of the working group can complain about how things are being run, even by the chair, I would encourage you to do that.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*That’s not the point, Cheryl. In any case, I can answer the general question, not the specific. The general answer is the rules under which the working group would operate were within the charter that we approved. In our wisdom, if we didn’t like one of these rules, we should have objected at that time.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I don’t see the rule as a bad thing. The rule is a very good thing; we do need continuous disclosure. It’s in the exercise of how continuous disclosure –
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*But Sebastian was asking the general question of why are we following GNSO rules.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes, and I –
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*The interpretation of – may be subject to question, but the general answer is we tacitly approved them when we approved the charter.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Not only when we tacitly approved them in the GNSO rules, which have been referred to in that charter, are the ones that certainly, Alan, you, me, and Vanda have worked very hard to make what they are, including the matter of continuous disclosure. So I think it’s the implementation of it which is the issue.
>>>> In a perfect world, where I am feeling shabby, I will be on the next GA/AS call, Sebastian, and seeing as how both Avery are on the same team that created those rules, you may have the pleasure of seeing her and I disagree on the implementation, and me strongly question the usefulness of it, and if need be, go back to the PPSC and our work team, and have that clarified in the final draft.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*We would know what the final draft said if the ICANN website wasn’t hung.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Hmm?
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I said and we would know what the final draft actually said if the ICANN website wasn’t hung.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Oh, it’s still down?
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Well, it’s not responding, presumably that means it’s down.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, so we still do have some issues. All right then. Okay. We did a piece of any other business before we intended to, but I just didn’t understand the issue. Thank you for explaining it to me, and I think it’s one, Sebastian, that we can deal with in terms of generality of why are we following rules in a joint or co-chartered or whatever situation.
>>>> It is because the rules we were following have been strongly built by us in the first place, and the whole design of the draft rules is that they should be applicable to not just GNSO working groups, but working groups and work team activities ICANN wide.
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>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*My question was not the general purpose, but how it’s implemented, and I just want to review two sentence of Avery. I was a bit squeamish about the need to poll every member of every meeting, however I lost on this subject and the requirement does call for the polling at each meeting, and it’s -
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes well, her current interpretation needs a review. Unless it’s changed drastically by the ppsc since last the work team that Avery and I were on. Alan, you’re on that work team. I’m not familiar with any changes that have come back to the work team on that yet.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*No, I have not been active on that work team, so I cannot answer that.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Well, we’ll sure dig in and find out. It’ll be a small side piece of conversation at the next JAS working group meeting. Okay. Moving on to where we should be, which is summary minutes. The first one is an email to Eric. Did we get to that last time? I don’t remember if we did. We should respond. Did anyone respond? There’s no action item on that, so I’m wondering did we actually get to the any other business. Alan, you raised that.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Remind me what it is, because the words you said don’t ring a bell.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Email from Eric is what it says. Email from Eric under any other business.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Oh, Eric Berner Williams. No, we never got back to him. We never got to the item on the agenda, and he has sent a different message to a different forum saying that he is not going to be working for (Core) as of soon, and he would like to get involved in At-Large, what should he do.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Ah. Okay.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*He sent originally to you, me, and Sebastian. And then he sent a similar message, but not worded quite the same way to I think a larger group. I don’t remember if it was any RALO or At-Large.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, so two things. In terms of the summary minutes we need to have the – that more than just Eric in there. Eric BW might help in jogging our future memories, re opportunity for contributions to At-Large. We didn’t get to it in the any other business, but we can get to it now.
>>>> After today, we’ve got an action item to respond to Eric. Shall we discuss now what responses you want to make to Eric, however? Dear Eric, anyone is welcome in At-Large. What else do you want to say?
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I guess the boiler plate is, I think he lives in North America, and therefore he can certainly join an ALS, he can join the North American RALO as an individual, and I think we have no choice but to say he is welcome in any of our working groups that he would like to contribute to.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, well I think that’s a simple response. I’ll send that out on behalf of us that we got to that piece of business today, and that’s an action item for us to get to Eric on that.
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>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*Can I ask a question? Did he send to the Excom specifically?
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I believe he sent the initial note to Cheryl, me, and Sebastian – and I believe he sent another note to some other list, probably At-Large, or mentioned it in passing on some other list, either At-Large or NORALO. I don’t know which.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Which means that it really is us who should respond other than – just say go to our website, which is the same response anyway.
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>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*I just wondered.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay.
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>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*But you know what I am curious about? This is not a chat that I see on the VI integration list, he doesn’t come across as an IE fellow.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Well, he’s not, definitely not.
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>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*Well then isn’t it kind of strange, that he would ask that question?
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Not at all.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*No, because it’s the same question as Avery asked, excepting she only ever asked me individually. She said we had a number of email exchanges when Avery said I want to become involved, and I said well, At-Large is open. Choose your region. Choose your ALS.
>>>> Choose your abode, and off you go. And then even having done that, she’s had a number of followup and clarification questions on is there any limitations on voting, and how she votes, because she’s a member in more than one ALS, blah blah blah. I’ve given Avery personalized 101 lectures via email, so we are actually, I just haven’t had the time, energy, or inclination with the other work load to bring it up to our attention now.
>>>> But as we said on the call, we are highlighting I think an interest, not only for individuals who are well known in the ICANN world at various levels to be involved as their roles change in ICANN, but we probably also need a little bit more of a personal orientation pack that people can grab off a website to make the individuals either in an ALS or a region to feel better empowered.
>>>> This is probably more important for those who have a high profile or a greater understanding of ICANN, because in coming from a particular subset, you know a very particular subset of rules and regulations. You know, with Avery, she has been absolutely immersed in how GNSO and GNSO council did things, and didn’t want to misstep when she started to play in our sandpit.
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>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*But she may have discussed with a fellow member of the (inaudible 0:13:13.4) join the EURALO and working and (inaudible 0:13:20.2) and I think there is not problem to come and to work.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*There’s no problem to come and to work. What I’m saying is we’ve heard from people we’ve all known enough to ask to either email to a few of us, or to one or other of us, or to pick up a phone and talk, or Skype or whatever. These are people who are confident with those interactions.
>>>> I fear that in the absence of some better introductory and welcoming information that any ALS or region could use, or make available from their website; we may not be encouraging other individuals as well as we should be.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*And let’s be blunt about this. If someone goes to one of our websites, there’s a good chance they’ll start following pointers and get to a page that looks like it’s talking about something current, and was last updated two years ago, or is a dead end completely. We don’t make it particularly easy for someone who is actually knowledgeable to find out how to get involved in us, or even to find out what we are doing.
>>>> And I say that not in any level of nastiness, but I was trying to find one of our pages the other day, and that’s what continually happened to me.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*And in fact, just while we’re on this topic, since we’ve gone off into yet another tangent, but always exciting doing that, Heidi and I were discussing the mechanisms, well, the timing and programming, and some of the mechanisms that were going to be explored and what limitations we might have.
>>>> Wiki World, as we use from social text sending to confluence, one of the things that I found rather rewarding Alan, and I hope you do too, is that because everything that was ever social text Wiki, if the page exists, it may or may not be linked to or findable very easily, but it must exist. I don’t think you can actually delete things totally.
>>>> Everything comes across in a flat, as opposed to hierarchical situation, and I was hopeful and (Navid) indicated to me that he didn’t think this was not the case, but I’m hoping it is the case when proof comes through. But this might be a way that we actually recapture some of these missing pages and missing pictures, historical data.
>>>> The one that concerns me, for example, is when you look at the leaderships in APRALO, when we ran our election call, there was no history. In other words, you only could find current call for elections. You couldn’t find all of the data on all of the previous calls on whose ever been put forward by who from the beginning. Now, that page existed, it must still happen.
>>>> Hopefully, when we move across to confluence, it will surface and we can capture that data and have it linked and put in a hierarchical archive, which allows us to create a history at the moment, as it should be, particularly this social text space, but also to some extent the At-Large space, simply because of its maintenance requirements.
>>>> But it leads out to so many of the Wiki pages, it’s misleading at best, non-satisfactory at most. Okay. Next point was the, and I think there was an action item out of this. Sebastian, you raised the cover message to Tijani. I don’t see an action item out of that. Is that another thing we did not get to then? It seems a little bit too little too late if we didn’t.
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>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*I don’t remember even what was the discussion? I remember inquiring but –
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay. Well, there you go. It’s been in the minutes, no action item is linked to it, there’s not much we can do about it. We did however; ask for the misleading sentence in the terrorism issue to be fixed. I believe that was the misleading sentence in the terrorism issue in our previous minutes, and again I do not see an action item specifically linked to that.
>>>> So, how is everyone’s memory? I want to know how (inaudible 0:18:20) things we want to fix, but my issue is the minutes don’t tell me clearly enough where it was to check.
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>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*I’m looking into that now. My recollection is that I changed that as you discussed that.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*At the time. That’s fine. So in that case, when we have something that happens in real time, and a near fortnight later we can’t remember, which is really scary, can we have the minutes, Seth, you’re taking notes today, so this one’s in your court, but Heidi, I think it’s something you might want to look at as sort of an admin SOP.
>>>> When something like that happens, then a little dash saying done during meeting will save us the time and energy of certainly me trying to go through wondering where it was that that was raised from, so I can check that it has been done because it didn’t arise as an actual action item.
>>>> Some mechanism so we know it’s been closed, even if it’s just in summary minutes rather than full carryover to an AR would be good. Maypay you all know about, and we had our meeting about that and things are coming forward. We did eventually finish off the JAS charter, did we not?
>>>> Or were we checking at a follow on meeting? There was to’ing and fro’ing after the meeting, Heidi. Do you remember? It was the five items issue. I know that you to’d and fro’d with the GNSO after the meeting, that is an action item.
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>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Yes.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*We need to record that.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*The item was to check with Olaf or maybe Carla about whether –
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*It’s not that. I know she did that; I just want to know because we can cover action items at the same time.
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>>>> Alan Greenberg: Okay. Okay.
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>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*I covered that and it is corrected. I believe it was four, but I can again show you the link, but I discussed that.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes, but just so we can get it recorded in today’s meeting that that has gone to bed.
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>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*That can be closed.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*It is closed.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*So the GNSO –
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*The result of it was that GNSO put on the four, not the five items.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*No, no. We know GNSO put on four, the question was did they go back and discuss whether to revise or not. We know they didn’t revise.
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>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Okay, I can go and ask – I’ll ask Floyd right now and let you know.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay. As long as we, that will come up again at the next ALAC meeting, otherwise. Okay. Moving through again I see we’ve got the letters going off to Binary Egypt, etc.
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>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Yes, that’s been taken care of. Behar has just come back from vacation, so that is in progress.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*So that one is not closing, that can stay. That’s fine. The LACRALO Travel Budget Call, been there, done that and still continuing today, and we will be dialing Kevin in when we get back to that part of our agenda. The policy development stuff is all on our agenda.
>>>> That’s nothing outstanding from the summary minutes is there? Anyone correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe everything we said we would do was done in the summary minutes for the last meeting.
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>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*We sent the request; it came back with an advisory.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes, I think we got through all of those, which is – yoo hoo. Ditto VI, ditto wow, we have a small change with the proposal on the single character IDNs. Just to report to the, which is again both an action item and piece of the minutes, report back to the executive – and I think I sent it to the Excom when I sent it, but if I didn’t put me against a wall and shoot me, I suppose.
>>>> The advice of the IDN liaison was that it’s a little too early to, at this stage, be putting in responses and (inaudible 0:22:55.2) interim paper. We had put previously done things on their papers before, and it was his advice, when he was asked to do so, Carlton, correct me if I’m wrong, that we would not need to put in a comment.
>>>> We had said that we would be relieved to not put in a comment, but the advice of our IDN liaison was that we did in fact not need to put in a comment, that would be a little bit too early to do so, and my view was we will take the advice of our liaison, otherwise why do we have them. So that’s sort of closed that off.
>>>> We’ve got an action item on the Review Team. Heidi, do you want to – the Review Team application reviews?
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>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*That item has not been done yet. I will get to that in the next day. Again, the applications are due; the comments back from ALAC are due on the 12th of September.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*We’re not behind time yet, we’ve just got to gather our group together to do that. I knew you and I discussed this, I just wasn’t sure where it was in terms of getting closed. Okay, we’ve got Seth on the call, and we’ve got a point on the agenda for the improvement work team, so he’ll give us an update on that. Travel issue, we’re coming back to, and that’s it until we went in camera.
>>>> Is there anything on the action items we missed, that hasn’t been done? I don’t think so. Other than endorsement PAD team needing a Wiki page to work on. Can you make sure, Heidi that gets wrapped up in our next conversation on confluence?
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>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Yes. I will follow up with both, sending out the message and the Wiki.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Terrific, fantastic. When we have confluence discussions we should be thinking about those needs as well. Terrific, okay, phew I’m plumb tuckered out and we’ve only just got through the very first step. Anything on the wonderful world of PAD Carlton? I note the – a couple of those we’ve already discussed in our review. Go ahead.
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>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*There’s nothing more new, there’s a ccNSO review, external review’s final report, that’s been added to the PAD. I’ve actually sent to Rudi to have a look at it and see if he can beat up a draft. He just came back from vacation, he’s promised to get to it at some point.
>>>> We still have a little time until we’re needing that. You mentioned James advised about the single character IDNs, we will take that advice, and the rest of things are at statements are prepared and waiting for comment, or been voted.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*All right then, terrific, any comments from anyone? No one is waving their hand at me, but I’m also a little bit fearful that the adobe room may not be having the response time if sites are down. No comments? If not, thank you very much. It’s nice to actually catch up on some agenda points and get back on track here.
>>>> One thing I suppose that we should ask, just in terms of not so much PAD, but public comments anyway. Alan, when did you last check on the site being a problem that the by-law change had closed? Yesterday it was still open.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I haven’t checked, but I will check as we speak, if it’s up.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I must say I was of the view that it’s not appropriate, let alone necessary for us to put in an ALAC comment to our own by-laws comment, period. We had encouraged the regions to, etc., etc. At the close of it, I think there is because of, for example, the other regions not putting in their statements to the pc system but rather to our own list, where they were supportive of what AFRALO had said, and things like that.
>>>> What I did want to raise under that is due to the – shall we say scanty selection, with the exception of, obviously, Alan’s comments – that have gone in, perhaps we could, in the total bizarro land of what Carl’s comment says, perhaps we could, Heidi, look to a piece of staff generated advice from material and conversation on our list, and then adjunct an annex to the summary of those comments so that we have more of a true and accurate record, instead of a sad and disappointing one.
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>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Okay.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*For the record, the comment period has closed, and there were no comments online.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, thank you Alan. There’s disappointment in that for a whole lot of reasons, which while we’re not in camera I don’t think we can go over. I felt that the opportunity for one of the reviewers to particularly stand on a soap box that we all know is very important to him.
>>>> And had been generally allowed to be a minority statement attached to the full work team report that reviewed the ALAC was something that I had hoped that other members of the At-Large advisory committee Review Team and/or their Chair may have had the time, energy, and opportunity to respond to; obviously that hasn’t happened.
>>>> We need to ensure also, the conversations that went on in our list where support and endorsement for particular statements or parts of statements that are on the pc space, i.e. Tijani, Batwan, and Alan’s individual statements, or Tijani’s an AFRALO statement.
>>>> So two individual and a regional statement, where they did get wholesale, general, or specific support on that is in our list, it’s that which I’m suggesting that we have an At-Large staff gather some information to be attached in some appropriate way to the formal review of this because it’s a formal review and summary of this that will be going to the Board.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Maybe we need an At-Large community call on how easy it is to post things, to make comments in the comment period. It really just is email. It isn’t all that daunting.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Thank you for making me smile, Alan. I’m not terribly sure Heidi that we need to make that a high priority call.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I think it’s the highest priority we have. We keep on going through these comment periods that no one comments on.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*What I think is important value comment period.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I think it needs to be an ICANN tutorial, not just At-Large.
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>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*An ICANN tutorial, but I tell you, you aren’t going to get around people who just spoken up at the wrong time but refuse to put the comment where it should be.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*It’s also I think both a jading of people to see the pc period and say, this service or window dressing thing that either are or are not taken seriously or a great deal of notice of.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*The problem, Cheryl, is that that has traditionally been the case. More recently there have actually been times that things change because of the comments, but people still aren’t making any.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I’m not a subscriber to that fear, but I do understand.
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>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*Just recognizing it.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*yes. And the other thing is, it is the single highest complaint that the affirmation of commitments atrt has received. The single highest sets of complaints and concerns is around public comments and how they are summarized, how they are responded to, how they are reflected and how they are or are not an effective tool. So it is something that ICANN wide probably does need to be looked at.
>>>> Not necessarily changed, perhaps, we don’t need so much a paradigm shift of how we do things, but a recognition of how it should be done, and is done, and how it has changed might be useful. Okay, we shall see, and perhaps we as an ALAC, later can make a piece of advice to the Board as it considers the ATRT report, because it will be mentioning this topic.
>>>> Perhaps, Carlton, we might do a little pre-planning on that, but in the December period, or the November period, in November, December we should be prepared to put some advice to the Board specific on the trust and venue that community has in the pcs. And encourage them to do something about it.
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>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*Sure.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Cheryl, we forgot the particular comments on the term of the At-Large Board director. My recollection is you were going to be asking ICANN counsel to make an explicit statement that what the ccNSO did could be done again. Do I remember correctly? And if I do, did you ever get anything?
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I wasn’t going to ask an explicit statement, I was getting it as a piece of precedence by JayJ in Brussels.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Sorry, I misremembered.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*What I meant to go back and ask for in writing actually had to do with BCEC and the ability for – I will be happy to go back and do that, and Heidi has actually done that for me. Thank you Heidi, on bended knee from Sydney but that was actually more a statement requested by the BCEC that the also doodle advice information, but there was no impediment to us going up to but not including the vote on a slate of candidates (inaudible 0:35:05.4).
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Sorry, I misremembered.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*That’s fine. I just needed to be clear that we had done one, and the other was simply a precedent.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Okay.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay. Do we need to do travel support plans for Cartagena as a separate item to our travel discussion, Heidi? Do you want to tell with that now, or does it really get wrapped into talking once we’ve heard from Kevin?
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>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Yes, well.
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>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*I think we wrap it now.
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>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*I’m checking to see if he would like to be called out now, he –
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*No, not yet, because I don’t want him yet.
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>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Exactly. That’s what I let him know.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I have a specific question on that though.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*In the past, it has been hand waving, regarding how we handled the new noncom appointees. That is traditionally noncom appointees have been invited to the meeting at which they are seated at the end.
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Correct.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Originally this came out of a noncom budget, travel budget or something, I don’t know. Since they have been talking about rigidly enforcing the 25, and conceivably we will have two additional people at this meeting, what are – are they going to cover the 27, if indeed there are 27?
>>>> That is if two of the people are being replaced, both the old outgoing and incoming people would plan to go to the meeting, want to go to the meeting, does ICANN cover it from one of its fudge budgets, or are we expected to cover two other people?
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>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Good question Alan. It’s one I think you should raise when Kevin is on the call.
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>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I was just giving notice that it should be asked.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*Sure we should, but last year when I joined, it was the noncom that actually invited me, but I don’t think the budget came from noncom, funny enough.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I don’t believe it did either, and that’s why the question is being raised.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes, I think you’ll find the budget came from us. Go ahead, Sebastian.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*I think we need to expand the question. Not just the ones selected by the nominating committee, but also the one elected by the RALOs.
>>>> **
>>>> Alan Greenberg: Are there RALO people who are seated only at the end of the meeting?
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*Yes, it’s the same for the RALOs, I guess.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I don’t know the timing of them.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*So is the RALO transition at the AGM as opposed to when the vote happens?
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*That’s how I think it happens.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Why would a region only transition its leadership at the end of an ICANN AGM as opposed to whenever its region makes the changes?
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*That’s what I’ve found has been the case in the past.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*That’s how I know it for LACRALO.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*The same as APRALO. You either are or are not in the seat. If you’re in the seat, you go.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*You go, right.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*It’s not the same for EURALO I guess.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, woo hoo, wonderful EURALO.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I would find it hard to say that is ICANNs responsibility, though.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I can’t justify it. Not when it’s one region.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*It’s the seat. It’s the seat you’re concerned about. Who is in the seat?
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes, exactly. Okay. It sounds like, Heidi; we need to discuss the EURALO leadership just to see what is going on. I think it –
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*You mean with the GA?
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Well, in terms of expectations of having outgoing and incoming leadership funded.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*No, I don’t think in LACRALO there is any question; it’s always been who is in the seat at the time.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Cheryl said EURALO.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Which is the same way it has been in Africa, in Asia, and I gather from Alan also not in America as well, so we have hour out of the five regions doing things one way.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I wouldn’t swear for North America, but I’ve never heard about the problem before.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Well, has North America ever changed its leadership?
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Yes actually, that’s a very interesting question. The only ALAC member that we’ve changed was middle term, due to a resignation. So we may not have had the case before, and it may not be relevant.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I actually don’t think you have.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*And of course, if it’s a movement from an ALAC seat to the chair or vice-versa, the person is covered one way or the other.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Right. That’s a zero sum game. But it’s when it’s fresh blood, as well there may be, if that’s the situation with EURALO, if they for bizarre and peculiar reason have tied themselves to the ICANN AGM, all right, we need to have a think about that. Thank you. And there’s and AI out there. What you’re hearing is you probably won’t get wholesale regional support for that. But it’s in – if it’s in your memorandums and articles, so be it. But I would be for the future strongly encouraging all regions to be at least in sync or discussing this in their cross regional leadership places, spaces.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*You know why I am trying to resolve that is because the case this year will be with me, which means that the general assembly in September, somebody is elected to my seat, and we have also to change the vice-chair, and I don’t think – I think I was elected at the end of the general assembly, but maybe I’m wrong also on that subject. Just as there are some needed rules to apply to everybody and I don’t know how we will do that.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Well, I certainly know that I had been appointed to the ALAC and did not go to a meeting once I had been appointed to the ALAC. My region, because we’re not talking about leadership of the regions here, we’re talking about ALAC. The ALAC members seat at the AGM that is not a question, all right?
>>>> Because there was a whole meeting between me being appointed by Asia and me going to my first meeting in the name of ALAC. So the ALAC reps are definitely at the December meeting. That’s not leadership. It’s the regional leadership which we thought you were talking about. But whoever is the ALAC rep should be going.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*But Cheryl, the issue is, we were saying for noncom, the tradition is that the incoming person is not seated until the end of the meeting, but is brought to the meeting. If he is replaced as the ALAC member, can the incoming person expect also to be brought to that meeting if they’re not otherwise there anyway?
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*Yes, that’s a noncom ALAC member.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I would expect them to be going to that meeting –
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*The issue is who pays.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Noncom.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*Can I say the issue is who pays, and I was telling you that my experience was although the invitation to the meeting came from Noncom, I believe it was At-Large who paid.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Let us just try to solve with Kevin the Noncom, which has a long history of the incoming person being invited to the meeting. And if that’s settled in our favor, then let’s worry about the RALO appointment.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*For example, I replaced Hong Xue, right? I replaced Hong Xue when she moved out of the ALAC, the interim ALAC, I replaced Hong Xue at a particular meeting, I went and she did not go. That’s what I’m saying.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*Was it because she was not able to come or?
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*No, not at all. I was the ALAC rep in Los Angeles.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*We were talking about this is a EURALO meeting.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Cheryl, that’s a slightly different situation, because if I remember correctly, the rules were that you were seating something like a month after the signing of the memorandum of understanding, between the RALO and ICANN – so it’s not at an ICANN meeting that you were actually seated.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*That’s correct. We had a whole meeting – but even though I was seated, I did not go to one of the meetings. Hong did.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Okay.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*What I’m saying is in terms of travel budget, it happened for me in Los Angeles. I hear the issue, I understand the issue. What I’m saying is what has happened in the past, and expect that we need to deal with it. But we’re probably at the time now where fresh blood in coming in from the seats that were occupied as we moved from a transitional ALAC to the ALAC version 2, for the first time. And I attended the meeting before I was seated at Los Angeles, not out of the ALAC budget or At-Large travel budget at all, I went as a ccNSO person for AEDA.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*The real issue at this point is the travel guidelines have not allowed for how we handle transitions like this. The Noncom has explicitly invited people, but assumed someone is going to pay for it. For the RALO appointed people, it never has been an issue because we haven’t had many transitions. In your transition, for instance, you luckily had someone to pay for your travel, so it didn’t come up at that level, and besides at that point, we weren’t counting this carefully.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*No, at that point, we were definitely not as anal retentive as we currently are. Come on, this is getting beyond petty. It’s certainly a waste of most of our volunteer time. Okay. So we come back to this when we have Kevin on the call. Let us launch into the thrill packed and exciting world of the At-Large Improvement work team. Seth, the floor is yours.
>>>> **
>>>> *Seth Greene:*Thank you, Cheryl. Well, our call for members went out, and I think everyone knows. We had a fairly positive response. The team memberships on each team are set up now, and we’re about to send out the doodle for the first call of each of the four teams. Each RALO is represented on each of the work teams at this point. I think that’s everything.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Well, that’s actually a good thing, excellent. Heidi, the next one is results of RALO elections. Which RALO elections are we talking about? Not all RALOs have finished their elections.
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Sorry, these are possible issues for the ALAC agenda, and I thought that by the 24th we might have more updates, for example the NORALO results, where we have Beau coming in as Chair, and Darlene has been re-elected. Those are just the possibility of an item for next week’s ALAC.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Ah, okay. So just – that’s fine. We are going to have to deal with that. We can use that as our primer for the discussion when we need to have it with Kevin, because we have some regions which are having a cost mutual effect due to their changes, but we’re aware that this may not be the case of all of the regions, and we’ve asked Kevin how we now, for Cartagena and in the future, are going in future are the new travel guidelines going to deal with it.
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Cheryl, if I may, Kevin is – it sounds like he is biting at the bit here. Can I go ahead and have Adigo call him?
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*As long as you don’t want to promise staff any time to get to social text proposed timelines, or the any other business matters because I can’t see a call with Kevin coming in under thirty minutes.
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Okay. I will tell him about ten minutes.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*About five, ten minutes is all it will be. Give us our hour. Right. The – while we’re waiting, because I think Heidi needs to lead the discussion on this social text confluence. We do need to have the results of the RALO elections. Perhaps it stretched out slightly from what is written there for the agenda of the ALAC on the 27th.
>>>> There’s been the – I think we should say there is discussion recording, etc., of the regional election to ALAC positions, regional elections, including to ALAC positions, but we also need to resolve the election for the regional nominating committee people. So we need a second subset in that topic, if you all agree with me. Reason being, four of the regions have only put forward either by reappointing their existing person, or putting a new person in uncontested.
>>>> That’s fine. I assume it will not be the ALACs wish or whim to put in someone else who has not been sifted and sorted by the region. According to our timeline, we should be having a vote, the ALAC should be voting on the appointment between now and the meeting on the agenda for August.
>>>> If we start a vote now, which we can do, and then we’ll simply have it recorded at our ALAC meeting, it means that we will be getting two names and advice from APRALO, and that we will then have to take a vote. We can’t just endorse.
>>>> If we wait till the meeting and we ask for the endorsement or the vote for endorsement to happen at the meeting, we will actually only have one name from each of the regions and then it’s simply a matter of us discussing and endorsing those regional (inaudible 0:52:30.6) names.
>>>> The reason is that there was a mix up with one of the At-Large structures, and one of them thought that one person had cast a vote, but in fact that person was traveling and did not cast a vote, and by the close of the regional vote period, we have got a less than quorate vote under our rule.
>>>> So I can either get back to the region and say they can formally extend or re open their vote for that final vote to be cast and then it will be quorate advice coming to us, or, as I also said to them, they can simply give us the two names, the vote advice is nothing more than polling advice, and we will make a decision.
>>>> How do you want us to proceed? Do you want it on the agenda as a face to face decision, or do you want to start a vote, which then has to be a vote because you have to decide between two names in APRALO? And may end up not deciding the way the region wants you to, and that’s okay I guess.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Is there any chance that the region will not come up with a definitive answer by the –
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*There is no chance that the definitive answer will not be with us all by the meeting because if the vote hadn’t closed, we would already have a definitive answer.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Okay, so you’re saying by the meeting we will have a list of five names from five regions (inaudible 0:54:06.4).
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Correct.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I would then go that way. There’s no benefit in not.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay. Yes, we add that as a second item now for the agenda of 24th of August. I keep looking up and it says 27th of July on my screen, and consequently I keep changing the 27 to the 24 but keep failing to change the July to the August, just wishful thinking on my part.
>>>> I want to think I have more of my year ahead of me. Okay, so its result of the regional or RALO elections, and it’s also the matter of endorsement of the Noncom, and not regional Noncom appointments, so there’s sort of a two parter to that.
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Okay.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, our any other business, Alan, do you want to jump to that now before we go to confluence and then to Kevin?
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Sure. It dawned on me a little while ago that approving all these rules and making recommendations is fine, but we actually need them in our rules of procedure, so I took it upon myself to try to draft the rules of procedure, which will cover the At-Large Board member selection, trying as much as possible to generalize them and not make them very specific.
>>>> So whatever we learn from the first process will not necessarily mean we have to rewrite them completely. I drafted something, it’s not particularly long. I posted them to the Excom list, and once I get off this call, I’ll be putting them up on a Wiki. It just takes some time to format them, and sending them out to the At-Large working list for general comments.
>>>> I presume if people, with whatever revisions are necessary, we should be able to approve them either this ALAC meeting or the next one.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I would very much like to have them done at this meeting if at all possible, but do you want to have a fallback position in the minutes, I’m sorry, in the agenda, Alan? Do you want it to be discussed at this meeting for then a confirmation vote between this meeting and the next one?
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*When is our meeting? In two weeks?
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Our meeting is next week.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Next week?
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*The 24th, Tuesday.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I would put it on there for a vote, but indeed if there is active discussion going on, if everyone says yes, Alan, it looks good, then we can vote. If there was active discussion I would think we want to take some time to discuss it, and then put a vote on an online vote, or maybe the next meeting. I don’t think we want to try to throttle any discussion on this. It’s substantive enough.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, well let’s put it in for a decision, Heidi. The decision at the meeting, and if need be the discussion at the meeting can be we need more discussion because of information coming in on the list discussion, and we will start an online voting, ‘x’ number of days between now and the next meeting, so let’s leave it under decision mode.
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*And Alan, you’ll get back to me on that? Or you’ll put it out on a list, you said.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I put it on the Excom list, but I’ll be sending it to the At-Large Wiki a little bit later today and sending it to the At-Large list, so you don’t have to do anything at this point.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Other than get it on the agenda.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Yes, yes. I mean operationally. Plenty of things Heidi has to do.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*We need to clone Heidi. Go ahead, Sebastian.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*We have other things we wanted to change to add to our by-laws. I recall that the question about proxy was one subject – not at this time because it’s too short, but one time we need to add that piece of work we need to do on the by-laws.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*There are plenty of things in the by-laws and the rules of procedures that need to be changed. I don’t think we should try to link the two together, but the issue of going back to the rules of procedure and cleaning them up is –
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Still pending. But the matter of proxy that Sebastian has raised, is important because it is mentioned, or at least it was, in the draft when I looked at it. I haven’t looked at the most recent draft you send now.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Yes, I did share an earlier draft with Cheryl last night, just for your information. What I said is that if there were – proxies are allowed, subject to either general rules of procedure if there is a provision there for proxy, which there isn’t today, or rules made by the committee overseeing elections.
>>>> So there’s a safe in there saying my personal rationale I believe we should have proxies for this, we don’t want to disenfranchise people on something so important, but it would be subject to whatever proxy rules are put in place. So it doesn’t have to be done prior to this.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*Because one of my questions is that I need, since general proxy vote, since we discussed the subject, I don’t have, and I will really need for next week for two reasons. One, the (inaudible 0:59:55.0) it’s not just my wish, it will be the willing of the organization, and the second is that I will be really on early days and I don’t think on my vote I will be able to join you.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*We don’t have proxies at this point, and we’re not going to get it in time for a vote on this issue, but that will require a vote. Rules of procedure changes require two-thirds of those voting, is the current words, so as long as we have quorum, you need two-thirds of the vote.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*Two-thirds of those voting vote for.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*As long as we are quorate I don’t think it would make a difference to the end result. But, Sebastian, what would be if in response to Alan’s draft, your wholesale comments, support or otherwise, were on the record and those of the region as well. And then we can note that in our minutes. And yes, we do need to deal with the issue of proxy.
>>>> It’s one that I would like to deal with between – looking after we get this behind us, if we get our heads above water, as I think we are starting to do on the public comments, it’s something we might want to look at in the September/October period so that when we come together in Cartagena we can have some standard form of proxy, and ALAC including any of the fresh blood, making a decision on that. Okay?
>>>> I’ll give that an AI as well, Heidi, and then while we’re coming back to you Heidi, we jumped over. But as you were interacting with Kevin on the proposed timeline for social text to confluence, and then go to travel. Heidi?
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Sorry, I was talking to myself.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I was – are we there? Did we miss something really good?
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*That item, that was a suggested item for the 24th meeting of the ALAC and the reason for that timing, rather than discussing it today, is in the next few days I’ll be having a detailed meeting with Carol Cornell and the relevant IT people about that transition from social text to confluence.
>>>> The short message is that we are moving ahead faster than we had anticipated, because that was the request of the Excom. These project managers dealing with confluence are reacting to that, so what we’re discussing, what we will be discussing, is how exactly to present the transition period to the At-Large community.
>>>> Cheryl, I’ve mentioned this in brief to you, basically we’re thinking right now that there will be three messages, to alert the community about the changes. One would basically say this is coming up ahead, with approximate dates, and notice a day or two before, there will be a three day blackout period, where neither social text not confluence will not be available, and then there will be a notice the day of the blackout period saying there’s now going to be a blackout period for the next three days.
>>>> After that blackout period, then the confluence will come up. You will be able to edit that. At the same time, social text will remain, but that will be read only at that time. So that’s – again, I’ll learn more about that in this meeting we’re having, most likely tomorrow.
>>>> **
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, good. Well, any questions to Heidi on the very exciting shift from social text to confluence? Okay, all right. Let’s get Kevin in.
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Let me go ahead and get him dialed in.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Well, we had an hour for our Excom meeting. I don’t know why it was only an hour when we normally have a ninety minute call, but to my mind our business is important, as is the travel support discussion, but I see to be half of the hour as our maximum time for our talk with Kevin if you’re all in agreement.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*That’s okay.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*All right.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*That’s good.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*Cheryl, while waiting, I just have some wording in the website about the wording of the –
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes, I saw that, but that is ALAC members. I thought you were talking about regional leaders. We never had a net change that has been duly funded, and I gave you the example of APRALO, where that was specifically not the case. We haven’t had both in the room, funded by our budget before. I do see that the ALAC takes their seats in that meeting, and that is why I took the seat in Los Angeles because that was the AGM that year.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Since we have a lull in the time, Cheryl, the issue of the roll call on disclosure is not on the statement of interest, but on the disclosure of interest. That is, you have a potential conflict on an issue to be discussed, and on that one the words do say ‘the Chair will go through the call of the members one by one’. Rather interesting wording.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*So the wording says what?
>>>> **
>>>> Alan Greenberg:‘Participants should be polled individually by the Chair to ensure that all updates to prospective disclosure of interest, statements of interest have been received, and those responses shall be recorded in all minutes.”
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes, that’s to use a poll is normally it is an agenda item, and we just call that a poll that says ‘are there any changes or declarations under ongoing disclosure of interest’ yes or no, and if someone does not come forward, and it’s is private or public knowledge of someone that they should, that knowledge needs to go to the Chair and if the Chair then decides that they have broken the rules, that is an entirely different issue.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I understand that, but the words here are to be polled individually by the Chair. So that’s what she’s working off, whether that interpretation is right or not, I’m just reading it.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*My interpretation is that a polling individually, you go around and you say is there anyone who needs to make anything under continuous disclosure to each and every one of you on the call. If someone steps forward, that’s noted. If no one steps forward, that’s noted.
>>>> If someone then in the meeting says either in the meeting or privately to the Chair later, (Fred Nooks) should have stepped for with ... you can either call them out at the time, ‘Fred, what about your appointment to xyz corporation?’ ‘Oh,” says Fred, ‘sorry. I wasn’t listening.’
>>>> And they then try to get the egg off their face, or they are then brought to task in a disciplinary way by the Chair for not coming forward and following the rules, when they are specifically told to do so. So it’s been a run through today, with an explicit name by name call, that may I suppose be useful to establish a new set of no one has anything to declare baseline.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*That this was her interpretation of the rules. Not claiming, at least after the fact not claiming that there are not other plausible interpretations.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*I was about to say I can take her interpretation, because if I was presiding, that’s exactly what I would wish to do.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*But it doesn’t have to be a roll call.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*No, it doesn’t have to be a roll call, that’s true, different interpretations.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes and basically established a baseline, and that’s good. Kevin, are you with us?
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*I am, hi, Cheryl.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I’ll bet you’re excited about the nuances of working group rules that you jumped into the middle of.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Always thrilled to hear your lovely voices.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Aw. We’re in a very good mood. Let’s see if we can keep it that way. Hello, it seems like only a little while since we spoke on this topic.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Yes. It’s always too short.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*How do you want to go? Do you have some thoughts you want to share with us? We actually do have one – well, there’s a cojoin question. We have an issue that was raised in our meeting today that we need to also raise, but it’s a placeholder. Other than that it’s all yours.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Yes, to be honest, I don’t really think I have anything earth shattering more to share, other than just to reiterate the points that we made, which I guess I just go ahead and say them. Which are: the general assembly budget, which I assume is the topic at hand.
>>>> The support for the general assembly was indicated for the next three years for all the RALOs, and that thought there would be policy department budget which is basically secretariat. Heidi and her team, and support from executives like David and others, as well as the ICANN meetings team.
>>>> The Stacys and the Nicks of the world that they would provide their tactical expertise and contacting expertise and administrative expertise, so those two things I don’t thing have been controversial. I think the third one is the one which is controversial, which is community travel support.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Right, how do we actually get them there for this world support of GA?
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Right. So, I think the short answer is if we change the travel guidelines we have to be explicit about that because that’s been the closest thing to a consensus based multi-stake-holder policy development process in the finance world, like all the other ICANN policies. So that’s all I see.
>>>> I can’t violate that principle and unilaterally, as much as I love and care for you, I can’t unilaterally violate the travel guidelines for that. However, and I was trying to telegraph this quietly, if it’s a relatively small dollar amount, the total we can either find it, cut in various places which we’ve done, or conceivably pull it out of contingency and go to the finance committee and request that the Board release contingency for this.
>>>> There are, that being said, I need to reiterate every call that we are on a flat budget cycle. Revenue is flat, expenses are pushing, and things like the ATRT budget that’s being proposed is greater than what we had in the FY11 budget document, so we’re going to have to find – this discussion is happening all over the place.
>>>> So I have to look at, I have to put on my scorekeeper role, which I think is the most important one I have, and make sure that finance reports on all that so we don’t get ourselves in trouble with overspending the entire budget by nickeling and diming various (inaudible 1:14:03.0) but that being said, I think there’s probably some room - not to the tune of the amount that I saw when I was out of the office last week and finally read the emails from the week before.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, because my question was have you managed to have a look.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Yes, if I do the math, I think its several hundred thousand dollars, and that’s –
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Over three years.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Yes. So that’s a significant enough shift I don’t feel like that’s just in one staff person’s role. I might be wrong. Maybe I have that authority, but I feel like it should at least be surface so there is some feedback on that, but that’s after sending it to, what is more than what is currently provided in the travel support.
>>>> If we’re shifting, or unit costs are lower than we thought, and I can increase the number, the unit number, if the unit costs are lower. But I’m jumping steps there. If we estimate $2000 for travel, airfare cost, and we end up spending $1500 on average, I think there’s probably some wiggle room to bump up the number of people traveling, but not to the numbers that I’ve seen. That’s my initial thought.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Kevin, on that specific issue, how do we calculate how much we spent when we factor in that there may be one or people traveling in business class through medical or similar exceptions?
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*How do we do it?
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Well, what number do we use for those people? When budget increased for those kinds of reasons?
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Well, I think the short answer is the way the model works right now, the budgeting and spending model, is you don’t. You have to let us take that risk. So if airfare costs across the world jump by 40%, I think that’s an ICANN overall risk.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*No, that wasn’t the question I asked. The question is, if I have a cast on my leg at the next meeting, and I have to fly business class, is that extra $4500 – from $1500 to $6000 or whatever, come out of the ALAC budget or do you absorb that from some other contingency?
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*I think, that’s what I was trying to say, maybe too indirectly. I don’t think that is ALAC’s concern.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*So in other words, in calculating how much of our travel budget are we using, if we take the average of those who actually are flying economy, extrapolate for the one person who had a cast, we could use that number as a measure of are we on target?
>>>> **
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Well, I think that’s going down a slippery slope, and I think that’s dangerous. Until we can hold you accountable and what’s the ramifications of that, or going under budget and can you shift the money to somewhere else, until we –
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*No, I’m not saying we get the money to spend. I’m just saying how do we do the measure to have the discussion, when we have several people potentially like that?
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*I think that’s what I’m trying to communicate. I don’t think you do. I think that’s staff’s role to do. So my point – can I be clear on the response? So my point is rather than looking at you going through looking at airline tickets and getting refunds and looking at how the BCB pricing model is, and getting you all involved in these things with Steve and his team, that’s a slippery slope that will pull you into a process that is probably not cost effective.
>>>> Rather than that, if you look at there’s ways within the FY11 budget to tweak it, get a little bit and add a few more dollars here, and maybe add a person or two, then I think there’s room to do that. If you’re planning on taking advantage of maybe one part of the budget which is maybe below on unit cost, and then dramatically increasing the number of units, I think that’s a problem.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I would – when I said how do we, I meant we staff, we anyone. I was just trying to followup on your statement saying if we only spent $1500 per person, instead of $2000 then we might be able to increase the head count. I was simply asking, what’s the process for deciding if we did that or not, we being the global we, not me.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Right, I understand that. And right now, the way the budget model works is we do that after year end. That’s what we’re doing right now for FY10, we’re analyzing that as an after year end effect. We can’t really, at midstream, adjust our operating plan based on the Cartagena meeting is lower, so therefore we’re going to increase the cost of the next one. I don’t think we have the model to do that.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Okay, you’re saying on a year by year basis, if we were really under someone would be honest enough to tell us, and maybe we’ll benefit from it in the next year.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Okay, we’ll definitely do that.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Okay, that’s the answer I was looking for.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*With the GA, because we’re looking at three GAs in three different financial years, right, potentially?
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Five.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*No, that’s not what’s written down in the thing. Its three years.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*No, five over three years. Five GAs over three years.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*What I read was support for five GAs over three years.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*For the planning period. Yes, for the planning period, yes, of course.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*There are five over three.
>>>> **
>>>> Kevin Wilson: But the question is support. The question –
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*What does support mean. That’s the big –
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*We’ve got that in the sort of macro staff facilities that you described in the beginning of the call. The issue that we need to grapple with is, having got that potential, and it’s all very nice to have that potential, and it’s cost effective obviously then to do a GA at an ICANN meeting where we’re not lying out a cost of needing support and staff help and all those things in a place other than where they already are.
>>>> So we are talking, even though it does day at an ICANN meeting or at another key event in the internet infrastructure in the eco-system. Are we thinking that a GA is better over the next three years, for it happens at an ICANN meeting?
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*You know what? I apologize Cheryl, but you cut out right on the second half of that sentence. Could you repeat it, please?
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Are we looking at there to be a cost benefit advantage for a proposed general assembly of a region over the next three years if it happens at an ICANN meeting? Based on this, the fact that you’ve got meeting people already there, rooms already leveraged, the full staff and those sorts of things.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Sure. Sure. I think what you’re saying is will the general assembly cost less if it’s associated with an ICANN meeting rather than separately budgeted. My understanding is of course. I suppose you could come up with a scenario where that wouldn’t be true, where you staying in much less quality space or something like that, but in general that would be definitely true, and the efficiency.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, because what I’m hoping is, with this conversation and with whatever tiny tweaking is or is not possible, that we might also run in parallel is a set of discussion points. In the case of an application for, or the in principle support of a GA these issues are given, the first one over the next three years is when it occurs at an ICANN meeting, it is likely to be more cost effective.
>>>> Check a box yes or no, and if some reason believes that the answer to that is no, not yet, they’ll have to justify that. You see what I’m trying to get to?
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*I think I’m missing your point here, where you’re ultimately heading, yes, sorry.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, well maybe because you are getting the request from the regions. We will continue to get the request from the regions for face to face general assemblies. So let’s help them along this pathway with some navigation tools.
>>>> First checkbox point is to be at an ICANN meeting, or to not be at an ICANN meeting? Justification for, probable cost savings, it should be checked to run at an ICANN meeting because of the other support, room leverage, etc., etc. If you disagree, justify that.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Right.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, we might find others of those as we head back on the session. Go ahead, Alan.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Even though our expectation is at an ICANN meeting people are going to be housed and fed for about five days, where if it’s a standalone meeting it might be less, it’s not 100% clear to me that there is a cost savings to doing it at an ICANN meeting.
>>>> However, the amount of effort that would be needed to organize it, including gearing up for travel support and things like that at an off time, I think there has to be a damn good explanation why it should be done outside of an ICANN meeting. All the processes are geared around ICANN meetings, and although the actual dollars may be less in a different venue, I think it’s going to be a real hard sell, unless there are a whole lot of people already coming to that thing.
>>>> So I think the expectation should be at an ICANN meeting not necessarily just because of cost, but just cost and logistics and all the other things that go along with it. So I agree, Cheryl that we need to ask the question, they need to justify why they want to meet in a downtime, I just think we need to be careful in the rationale for making that decision.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*And there may be a situation where a region can well and truly justify and that’s fine.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I mean, it’s the equivalent of (apricot) where two-thirds of the people are going to be there anyway. That may be a different situation. So let’s all get on planes and go to the IGF, people who wouldn’t have gone otherwise.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Exactly right. So what we may be able to get in terms of positive – because I want to give something positive back to our community, that’s my end game. Go ahead, Heidi.
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Thank you. I just wanted to also perhaps suggest that under the navigation tools, something that David and I have been talking about that we would like the ALAC and the ALSs to define prior to holding a general assembly is the idea of the measurables; in terms of, for example, to what extent would the general assembly result in the strengthening of the policy development process.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*In other words, and articulation such as AFRALO put together pre-Nairobi, would be a good argument. An argument or a set of proposals that says an active general assembly, we’re going to vote for our leaders and change subsection 5 section G3 of our memorandum, is probably not as good, because to be honest, that could be done on the phone.
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Yes, that is the view that we are taking. And that’s fine to do, but it would be good to define more explicitly exactly what would a general assembly contribute to the policy development of At-Large, or of that particular region. Another item might be the aims and objective of a general assembly. What are the metrics of a successful general assembly?
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*Can I say something? All of the RALOs should then speak to a general assembly, and it says exactly what is supposed to happen at a general assembly, the principle reason for having a general assembly, so I’m not sure that’s going to forge any new pathways. It’s not going to hurt to write it down again, but quite frankly –
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*In the case of the desire of LACRALO, your region, Carlton, to have a general assembly in Cartagena or the next time we are in Latin America or in the Caribbean, but right now it’s Cartagena. I’m assuming we’ll be back in three years, so there’s a second opportunity if need be, what are the – I understood from our meeting with Kevin, and with Sylvia and the others who were on the call that was more than just the memorandum or wall mandated minimal requirements for general assembly, it was to be attempted. Is that not the case? Because I thought it was the case.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*Well, they talk about getting an opportunity to recruit and strengthen and all that kind of stuff. They call it the advice framework, but yes, that’s really not – the rules of procedure quite clearly state we should have a general assembly, it doesn’t say we have to have a face to face general assembly.
>>>> What is important to them, is they are saying to the extent that ICANN is having a meeting, and to the extent that we are in the policy advice stream, it would make sense to bring us closer to the center, if the meeting is held in the region, because it gives us an opportunity for more input, and all the policy advice, another aspect of the policy advice framework. That is their argument.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Isn’t that exactly what Heidi was saying she and David have been talking about asking for?
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*Yes, yes, but I’m saying I wouldn’t challenge any reference to that. If you ask them what the general assembly at the ICANN meeting is supposed to go, that’s all they can say. The fact is we have to have a general assembly, it does not say we have to have a general assembly meeting face to face. It doesn’t say that at all.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes, we’re all very aware of that, and that’s a very good argument for them to not be face to face because the bare minimum can be done online.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*So the only real reason is that people believe that it gives them an opportunity to come closer in toward the policy development framework.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, and that’s what, Heidi, you are specifically asking. Correct? I’m assuming she’s back on mute, so the answer will be correct.
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Yes, sorry. Yes. Carlton I’m looking at the LACRALO rules of procedure for the general assembly, and I do see that your items can be brought for discussion.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Can I get in on this? I think I have something important to say.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Heidi, can I drop off?
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*I’m not sure. That might be a question for the Excom.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Kevin, have you said everything you’re going to say?
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Well, I mean, I can say a lot more, but I’m not sure what the – I think the specific question is is there funding for the general assembly in Cartagena. Is that true or not true?
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*That would be one question. We have another issue to raise with you.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes, we had a couple. Let’s try and continue for a few minutes longer, Kevin. Alan, you want to hold your thoughts?
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I’ll hold my thoughts, and raise the issue I was going to raise with Kevin that we talked about earlier.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, let’s just ask Kevin to get finished since he is saying that there is a possibility or not.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*But I’d like to go back to this one afterwards.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*And I’m not trying to push it off, but it seems like you are dealing with very long term strategic issues, which are really very interesting, and it’s much more than just a phone call or two. These are really, really important strategic issues, which is bringing the RALOs into the center of the decision process, which is a fascinating issue, but the issue I thought – and I think that should be dealt with in strategic planning level or the operating planning level and really, really important to pull that in. So I’m not trying to jump off.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*It’s part of our improvements as well.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Yes. So the only issue I’m – the only reason I’m asking to be kind of taken out of that – in the case I’m needed for an urgent decision, I want to address it, but if it’s a longer term issue, we need to deal with longer term managers, which is papers and –
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*When is LACRALO likely to have a general assembly in Latin America? Can it be done in the FY11 budget?
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*So I go back to my answer. Sure, in the way the operating plan – this isn’t to annoy you, but I feel like I need to say it. It needs – in the way it was conceived of, appendix A page 61, there’s support for those two things, there’s not support for the travel thing.
>>>> I understand that the community misunderstood that, and believed that the travel was going to be supported for that. It wasn’t stated in the travel support guidelines, so it would be going against the travel support guidelines that was approved by the community. I think there’s some staff discretion, to spend a little bit more money, given.
>>>> And I probably went down the wrong slope there by mentioning that if the unit costs come down then maybe we have an opportunity of other SOs or ACs spent less, maybe we would have some extra money, and we have to balance all that with, as Alan mentioned, if you have some people spending at a higher class then you have to balance.
>>>> So there’s a balancing act. I think there’s some wiggle room at staff discretion to spend a little bit more money, but not $200,000 more. And that’s without community bias.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*The $200,000 was not just the LACRALO in the FY11.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Okay. So if you said hey, its $10,000 for LACRALO, for community travel support, I think that Heidi and David and I, and Kurt, or whoever else, we could probably swing that. If you’re talking about $40,000 or $50,000, first one out, I think that’s bigger than a staff decision for community travel support for one group. That’s just my gut feeling. I might be wrong, it’s a new –
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Wait a minute. Falling back on that, and then Alan does have a question, I also have Sebastian and then Carlton. Just on that, one of the ways is if we were ever told that in the absence of under the travel guidelines where the only support is for the 25, 24 people.
>>>> Alan will give me the number in a minute when he asks his question, per meeting, (inaudible 1:35:16.6) a general assembly is outside of that, obviously. Part of the number of people going to a general assembly would be in that, but there are additionals. If there is an amount ‘x’ that is able to be found for the regional general assembly’s travel support over the next three years, and let’s say that ‘x’ is $47,000 – that’s about what it is.
>>>> I thought that’s what Matt put together. Let’s say $47,000, and that amount can be found in a true, fair, and transparent way, can region A be told that they have amount ‘x’ to spend on their general assembly, and then if they can get 16 people there for that amount, fine. If they can get 60 people sharing a third of a peach to get there, equally fine as long as they only spend ‘x’ on travel support for the general assembly. Is that a way we might look at it?
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*That is a way we could look at. Yes, I would say that’s a safe assumption. The reason I didn’t jump up and say absolutely that’s a solution is because I’m hesitant to unilaterally change the travel guidelines, without –
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*What we’re trying to do is not change the travel guidelines, but rather look at specifics for general assembly travel guidelines. As a new and a pathway thing and it may not happen in the FY11 budget. I don’t know. If it doesn’t, fine. But boy, won’t we have a different process to get the FY12 travel guidelines together?
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Right. So we would – it goes without saying that FY12 is going to be better, we’re going to address this more – maybe it doesn’t go without saying. Let’s just say that out loud and clear. We’ll address this more explicitly and directly for FY 12 and beyond.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*And to do that, we need to start working on that now, and that’s a longer term thing and that’s fine. We’ve got a couple of steps we need to line up. Cartagena, December, this year.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*So this is the way, it has to be direct, and Heidi, you can jump in if I’m not being politically correct on this. So I’m just going to speak.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Kevin, we’re not overly concerned about political correctness in this subset.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Let me just speak frankly. If you can figure out a way to have travel support be for 20 people at less than $500, or ten people for less than a thousand, or 5 people for less than a couple of thousand, then I’d say throw us a proposal and I think we can find the wiggle room to do that.
>>>> If you think it’s doesn’t make sense to even consider it for Cartagena, if it costs a lot more than that, I don’t know what a lot more means, but if you think that it’s not worth it to throw that kind of money at something unless you do it right, it’s better to wait until another fiscal year, then I would drop this and not proceed with it.
>>>> That would be my think. Now, the part I don’t understand, the reason why I’m caveating the political correctness, is this might be a really important issue for the Board, which is hot on new gTLDs, and affirmations, and this might be a way to get them to complete something, just like the IRT surprise expenditures for last year.
>>>> You know, maybe – it’s in that realm where this is something really hot where the Board and the community would love to see that spending happen, even though it wasn’t planned for to accomplish something that is really, really critical.
>>>> But when I hear about things like what was said earlier, which I thought was really articulate, but those are long term strategic issues of bringing the RALOs in closer to the center of the decision making circle, that’s not an urgent type thing, I don’t think. I haven’t heard the Board talking about that kind of comment, kind of mission.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Right. Okay. Alan, I know you’ve got particular point to raise to Kevin, but I did have both Sebastian and Carlton, very briefly Sebastian, and then very briefly, Carlton.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*Yes, I will not politically correct, but we are talking about something, we used to have that support in action of the ALAC and the RALO meetings and the general assembly meetings and now it’s something added in the budget document and you tell us, oh, we write that, but we were just saying that before.
>>>> That’s not just discernable by me but it seems that a lot of people are members of the ALAC At-Large, something wrong in the process and I would like to know how we can go outside of this discussion, maybe go back to the Board or maybe have a request and recall process or whatever, but we need to do something. We can’t leave the At-Large like that, saying oh it’s like before. That’s all. Thank you.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Carlton?
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*I’m going to go a little bit with what Sebastian says, because I think we need to understand how this phrase, there is to my certain knowledge, a significant sector of people in LACRALO who took – read that document and interpreted a different way. If it all comes down to an interpretation of those lines in that document, there is never going to be a meeting of the minds on this.
>>>> I suggest that what we need to do is make a clear statement to say that this is the situation with respect to money, 2011, for Cartagena. We do not have it, and then say we will look at it again in more detail for the 2010 planning year. I think that is where we should come down on this. To do otherwise is just going to make it tougher out there on the edge.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Thank you, Carlton. That’s certainly a way forward, but I do also, at the same time, want to give the community some positive and some pathways because –
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*Oh, I agree with you Cheryl. Let’s give them some pathways.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*They’re being told it will be looked at again, and again, and the way to do that previously is to put it into strategic planning terms. Put it in new ways where we’re looking at the operational plan and the budget and the community has done that, again, and again, and again.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*Exactly. And again we have a misinterpretation, or we have a different -
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*But we are where we are. We need to find a way forward. Kevin, we have a very important issue for FY 11 that we do need to discuss, and I assume that you were trying to get me to either too excited or disappointed by the example figures you were hypothetically just giving. In other words, you were indicating to us on the Excom call that we could have $10,000 to spend on a certain LACRALO general assembly.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Um?
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I heard it.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*I’m saying as CFO, as my read of the budget I don’t have the rights to give $10,000 to anybody at any time or a dollar to anybody outside of the operating plan and budget. What I’m saying is there is some staff discretion because there’s some – it’s not like we have a line item budget where every single item is marked up, as much as I’d love to, it’s just not there.
>>>> So there is some staff discretion and staff discussion, uh, judgment that goes into ‘gee, is this sort of in my general realm of – in this case – policy development support?’ but I would think Heidi had a much stronger case if she could say, ‘Hey, David, we’re going to really help policy development support if we spend ‘x’ dollars on this thing’ and that’s the way to have the process come out.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, I see what you’re saying. It’s really important that we hear that now, and that you have got that clear and that we have got that clear before Alan asks his very important question, because it is about travel, it is about additional cost potential, and it is about Cartagena. Go ahead, Alan.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*all right. I am going to reserve the right to, since I haven’t been able to get in those fifteen minutes of getting a quick summary, but the question at this point is: specifically for the Noncom, new Noncom appointees, but also for the RALO appointees, the terms of ALAC people start at the conclusion of the annual meeting. Just like many other appointees.
>>>> The tradition for Noncom appointees is the Noncom has always invited the new appointee to attend the meeting, at which they are seated at the end, they, of course, the standing member of the Board, or the ALAC, or the GNSO, or whatever is also invited, is also still a member. In the past, there’s been a lot of fuzzy hand waving as to who paid that overlapping cost.
>>>> With the new clarity in the travel budget guidelines, it becomes more complex. The Noncom, I’m sure, is still going to invite the new people, if there are any new people to attend. It’s not clear who is going to pay for that.
>>>> This year we have the additional problem where there will also be several cases where RALO appointed people, the term ending ends on the Friday of the annual meeting, and the new term starts Friday afternoon of that meeting. Because we are now in a two year cycle, this is the first time, in most cases, that we have new ALAC appointees from the RALOs.
>>>> Not quite the first time, but it’s going to be the first large scale one. So the bottom line is we have a number of positions where we may, and we don’t know the answers yet, the Noncom hasn’t made their announcement, where we may have two individuals sitting in the same seat.
>>>> One outgoing, one incoming, and it’s always been traditional that the incoming person be allowed to see an ICANN meeting for the first time before they actually have to start doing the work. How do we handle that one in the travel guidelines?
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Because it’s not 24, it’s twenty however many.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Not 25. It may be as much as – we don’t know. Maybe 25 it may be 32.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*You want me to answer it?
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Sure.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Then in the ICANN public math world. We had this issue with every single group, and pretty much every single issue, so for example, the Board. We have a specific number of Board members, its right there on the left side, it’s easy to do. Well, invariably, what’s happened over the years is there’s a certain set of meetings, ICANN meetings, and retreats, and other costs for the Board in which you have incoming and outgoing.
>>>> It seems like sometimes we have out outgoing. You know, people come back to train on something or something. Or early adopters or you have – there’s always a wiggle room in there, but then you always have the others, unfortunately we always have the other situation where some Board members couldn’t attend.
>>>> We had the same thing with the GNSO counselors as we talked about. So we always handle those kinds of situations by saying, community, you don’t need to worry about the line items or the unit cost or the fact that one person traveled business class and one person traveled expensively because they booked at the last minute.
>>>> Because we have enough of the other situation where people didn’t show up, or they couldn’t get support, or the mass constituency couldn’t recruit enough members to attend, to take the slots, so it’s always balanced overall, until FY10, in which case overall, we’re nearly $2million over budget in total.
>>>> The good news is, ICANNs strong, we still have $47 million in the reserve fund. We’re still net positive to the bottom line, so it hasn’t been a critical issue. But as CFO, I need to just keep on issuing my mantra, which is let’s just be as prudent as we can. Work on the travel slot basis as you’re doing.
>>>> I would not, I hope you can delete this part, pens off or pens down or whatever the phrase is, internationally known, that says don’t record this, but I would be aggressive as a community, as representing a certain subset of the ICANN community At-Large, in taking liberties and saying okay, we’re going to count the incoming and outgoing, and just – rather than asking for permission, beg for forgiveness afterwards. That’s kind of what I’m asking.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*So you’re saying there will be flexibility, because the last thing we need is incoming people who can’t do their job properly for the first four months of the meeting because they’ve never seen ICANN before.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Right. And then later on we should nail this down so it is clear in the guidelines. Right now it’s vague. I would recommend to just, since it is a concern, rather than asking for permission, which I can’t really give you, because it’s not in the guidelines, beg for forgiveness and hopefully we won’t have a rampant case of this across all communities, or I’m going to have to –
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Okay, I’ll do that one thing. For the GNSO and ccNSO I may be wrong, but I believe the majority of the counselors are seated when they are seated, whereas in the case of At-Large the by-laws require people to be seated at the end of the annual meeting. So you know, this is one of those by-law required things; maybe we should have written the by-laws better, but that’s the way we wrote them.
>>>> **
>>>> Cheryl Langdon-Orr:(Inaudible 1:50:24.3).
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Well, yes. That’s like my earlier ‘we’. Whoever we blame it on, but the blame is on us – it’s good that we did it. Can I make a very quick comment on the Cartagena one?
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Please.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*What I’m hearing is if it’s $10,000 and we come up with a good case, we might be able to swing it quickly, but we’re not talking about $10,000. I think we’re talking about $40,000. The chance of getting that approved in time to start making the arrangements and moving these people, I suspect that process is going to start in a matter of weeks, not months, that Cartagena is effectively out, and we should just acknowledge that.
>>>> Unless they can somehow cut the cost down, I know if we put two people in a room we would save a bit of cost, I don’t think the airline would let us put two people in a seat, so you can’t cut the cost of that, and sharing meals may well be something we can get them to enforce, but you get the gist.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes. Standing room only ones might help with the airlines. Before Kevin answers that, because I don’t want to tie him down, he’s got plenty of time to think. Heidi, go ahead.
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Yes, just a few possibilities of running things together. Perhaps we could go back to LACRALO and ask them, “Do you wish to proceed to with efforts to have a general assembly in Cartagena? If you do, given the current budget, that would require that there be significant virtual or remote participation.
>>>> And it might be a shorter amount of time, or do you want to have this be a cross regional discussion and then plan on having a GA in the next year or two, with perhaps full ALS representation in person, and perhaps a longer amount of time?”. Just give them the options.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*And let’s make sure we keep using the words face to face opportunities as pertains to GA, as opposed to just opportunities for GA, particularly when for the LACRALO situation, you’ve got 99.9% lawyers there, and they will just go back to the memorandum and say but we have to have a GA.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Cheryl, a point on that please?
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Go ahead, Alan.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*The term general assembly in the memorandum, understanding it in the rules of procedure, in the good ICANN tradition is a different use of the term. The term in the rules procedure, the ones that I’ve looked at, and I’ve looked at several of them. I suspect the term General Assembly, capitalized, is referring to a body of people. That is the representatives from each ALS, represent the General Assembly.
>>>> It’s not a meeting; it’s a group of people. So we have to be very careful. If someone goes back, like someone outside of At-Large, and reads those rules, they’re going to see this is a different use of the term general assembly, and I don’t think we should be pointing to that use of it to justify these physical meetings. It is a different use of the same words. Typical for ICANN, but it’s a different meaning. It clearly refers to the group of people, not the meeting.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes, understood. And that’s the justification that I thought Carlton was bringing forward. For not quite cutting our losses, I hesitate to use that term, but I think you know what I mean. To us, it’s a loss, Kevin. But to the line item of the budget it’s not a loss, of course. For the (inaudible 1:54:22.2).
>>>> And trying to get a better boat built for the FY12 and for travel guidelines which needs to have specific attention addressed to mechanisms to facilitate face to face opportunities for the now back end and staff and logistically supported general assembly’s on the budget.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*I will point out, however, that when the last budget was approved, because of comments made in the public comments forum which preceded it, talking about constituency support and particularly referring to contracted parties and non contracted parties, the Board did say that the issues of constituency support for Fiscal Year ‘11 would be revisited early in the year. We do have that thing, but I think it’s going to be too late to do something for Cartagena.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Kevin, where do you see we are? Let’s see if we can get back to our communities with results of our conversation.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Okay.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Where do you say we are?
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Where do I see you are? I think it’s the same thing. There’s support for things that are explicit and not controversial, there’s not support for the part that apparently there was a pretty widespread misunderstanding of what the support meant on page 61, given that and given persuasive argument for the need on this support for travel support for general assembly.
>>>> Otherwise it’s not going to happen, you’re not going to get these great benefits from it, we’re going to – we can conceivably get a little bit of support. If it’s more than that, it’s got to come up to be really, really more widely discussed and more widely supported at the Board and community level.
>>>> If it’s at the $40,000, $50,000 plus – one of the things I heard on the last call was if you do it for Cartagena, but you don’t do it for Europe, or Africa, it’s going to be an even bigger problem.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*You’re right.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*So it would be better to say no, rather than to –
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Or the other way around. We’d only give Latin America $10,000 and give everyone else $50,000.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes, we need to watch what slippery slopes we suggest we jump down, I suppose. Okay.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*We value our lives more than that.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes. How many of us may now choose not to go to Latin America? But – no, I’m joking. Carlton, I think what you said is very influential on how I want to think about that, I think, Kevin, you’re not indicating other than additional support for travel would be insufficient.
>>>> What you can clearly do in wiggle room is probably going to be insufficient for complete success of a GA or complete support of travelers. It may add one or two, but it will not add what’s required. I didn’t hear you say that there is a reason for us not to share this. I think your example didn’t indicate that ‘x’ was the amount, that ‘X’ could be divided by any number of people or not.
>>>> But I think that is probably not a worthwhile exercise at this point in time, but one to think about as we’re taking the next step forward for the next rush of travel guidelines, which we’ll have to address this issue of general assembly.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Can I enter in for just a moment please? You said it right from my perspective, but I want to be really careful in my role. If anybody had asked me this question when we were doing the IRT, I would have said the same thing and we would not have had the IRT efforts in travel support for those people, or the affirmation Review Team for that matter.
>>>> It wouldn’t have happened. So that’s not my role, to decide what support funding is. All I’m saying is that under the current guidelines with the adopted budget, this is where I think we have wiggle room. Outside of that, support for the At-Large summit, for example, was outside the normal budget process. Outside of that, if the Board wants to take this on, or if there’s something like the IRT, then I think that’s the way to handle that.
>>>> **
>>>> **
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*We understand that, but when Heidi sends her list of travelers, right, the very first thing – which always happens, Heidi, correct me if I’m wrong, if the team that do the community travel support, they go hold on, Fred Nooks? That’s one more than they’re allowed. We have to wait for someone to – the travel guidelines says that (inaudible 1:59:58.3) so we’re going to put in those who are outgoing as well as those who are incoming, it will escalated.
>>>> And guess what? It’s going to get escalated to you as an exception, but there’s not a whole lot we can do about that. Right now, that is how we have had to do it, every single list of travelers. And we have to do it for Cartagena very, very soon.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Yes.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*So, we will do it that way. We will need to talk to the community about next steps, and I’m wondering, Kevin, is there a better set of times as you look toward the planning cycle for FY12 now, can we get some key dates out of you so our community is well prepared to insert the right times? It’s all good giving people thirty days, but our community needs more than that to properly get their act together to insert –
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Well, we’re still trying to discuss arbitrarily how to change our current process and what the impact is on by-laws and stuff like that, but I think at least internally what we’re discussing is maybe late September.
>>>> We’d like the AC and SO leads to join a call and discuss this overall process maybe that would be through emails or – I’m not sure that’s a public communication on changing that process, and then October/November timeframe have consultations on these kinds of things. It’s set up for the initial draft – now, don’t wait for the framework in February or March –
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Too little too late, exactly. That’s really important. That means everything we’ve done now, on this, even those we’ve just focused on Latin America and the current set of desires for general assemblies, five over three years, has in no way been wasted, because we need to be this far along to insert at the proper time in the proposed or possible timelines to be presented anyway.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Right.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*So that’s good. But if we can convince the community that the time has not been wasted, as well as them not getting what they want, there’s only so many no’s that people can put up with when we’re actually taking one of the most valuable things we possibly can from them.
>>>> Short of their life, is there volunteer time, and for some reason, people frequently are far more reactive and emotional about things they volunteer to do than they are even about their professional lives. So we have to broker these new situations very cautiously and very carefully and very assertively whenever we can.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Yes.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, any final words then Kevin? Other than I guess David and Heidi and you will be talking some more.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Yes. Thank you.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*And I’m sure with us at some point.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Yes. That makes sense.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Heidi? Anything from you?
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*No. Thank you very much, Kevin, for your time. I know that has taken a little longer, but we appreciate that very much.
>>>> **
>>>> *Kevin Wilson:*Thank you Heidi. Thank you all. Bye now.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*What we need now, Heidi, is to think about what we say back as a result of this meeting. Can we perhaps do that in the Skype chat environment, or did we want to draft something? How do you want to proceed, ladies and gentlemen?
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Do we have consensus on what we want to say, nevermind how we’re going to say it?
>>>> **
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I doubt that we have consensus on that. We have a proposal from Carlton which is one way forward. We could use those words. What do you want to say?
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I’m not quite sure what that proposal was.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Drop Latin America out of Cartagena and do it last.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Yep. I don’t think we have a choice. At this point, the most we could dream of getting is about $10,000. We don’t have the kind support on the Board and the Board finance committee to make this a slam dunk like the IRT cost was with the threats of intellectual property lawyers going to the US Congress.
>>>> So that’s not going to happen. We might be able to swing $10,000 which is not going to give them a general assembly of the kind they’ve been talking about. And I don’t think we want to give Latin America a $10,000 general assembly and then ramp up for real ones for everybody else.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Absolutely not. No. That’s scary.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*So given the timeframe, that we’re going to have to start travel planning very soon, we do not have a commitment; the Board doesn’t meet until the end of October. I don’t know when the Board finance committee meets; there is actually no chance at this point.
>>>> As disappointing as that might be to the people who have been diligently working on it and thinking that maybe it’s going to happen, I don’t see that. I think we have to put that in as delicate of terms as we can, and in the same statement say what it is that we are going to do to try to fix this for next time, again.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Again. So it’s just yet another longstanding ALAC and ICANN tradition that we can serially disappoint as many of our regions in order as possible.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*It’s lucky this is not a face to face meeting or you would have seen smoke coming out of my head when Kevin said next time we should put it through the strategic plan and operational plan process.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Like we haven’t already, for God’s sake.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*We have the support from the policy group now, all we have to do is add the second part.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Hastening slowly. So how do you want to proceed with this, Heidi? My thoughts are as a result of this meeting we should flag to the regions but particularly Latin America that we have had a full and – perhaps less satisfying – we’ve had a discussion.
>>>> We’re at a next step stage, and we would like – note the we here, people—would like the opportunity in their next meeting to discuss this matter as an agenda item, and certainly me and anyone else who can be on the call needs to be involved in the next LACRALO call, to explain all this. I don’t think we can do it justice by just a text message, but tell me if you think I’m wrong.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Heidi is not there anymore. She just dropped.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Isn’t she? That’s sad.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Next LACRALO call is tomorrow, she just put on the chat. Okay, I’ll take that role, she’s dialing back in. My second to last comment says we really need to write something to the Board responding to their statement saying they were willing to look at constituency funding issues that is they shouldn’t just be giving money to registrars and registries.
>>>> And do that in conjunction with a very carefully worded statement that does not use the word duplicitous, about the process we’ve gone through, the fact that it showed up that ICANN will support it with the staff support, but not with the travel funding, and this is a good example where we need constituency support.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I think that’s a very good idea.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*If we do that, there is a small change that we might get some money allocated for the rest of Fiscal Year ‘11, too late for Cartagena – but for the rest of Fiscal Year ‘11.
>>>> **
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Maybe something in the middle of next year or late next year. I think that’s a good way forward. So that’s really a major action item on us. I think it’s an Excom wide activity, I think it’s something we need to have as an agenda item. Is Heidi back on the call yet?
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Yes.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay. I think that discussion is a major agenda item for the ALAC meeting. No, the action item will be on the Excom, and anyone else in the ALAC that wants to work in an ad hoc way, and we also need to involve budget and finance committee on that as well. So what we might do it.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I will try to put together that – not the note, but a bullet form of the issues to raise, if someone keeps on reminding me.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I think that’s a very important thing. Now, Heidi, what do you think the practicalities are of us reporting to the LACRALO meeting?
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*I think, I’m just – the date actually is Thursday, so you have one day, and there’s the agenda. It looks like that travel is not an issue currently, but obviously I would think that they would want to put this on the agenda, it’s important.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Carlton, are you going to be on that call?
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Carlton, you might be on mute. That’s star 7 to unmute.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Anyway, I assume he probably will be. All right, well, Matthias deals with the regions and their agendas, so I guess.
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Actually, I do know see it. It is actually the second item under proposed agenda items.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*I was about to tell you it is on the agenda, because there has been a note sent out. I had a conversation with Dev, and one of the things I asked Dev to do was to send out a note to kind of corral the people into having a conversation, because I was anticipating this kind of outcome.
>>>> If you look at the note, we’re saying to them let’s defer it, and we give them a couple of options and the reason why we wanted to get them to start thinking about that before. Are we going to spend the whole meeting on this? And so that’s why that note was put out. So it’s on the agenda, and we’re going to discuss it. I just think that the way forward is for us to say here’s what we have. I’ll be happy to do that on behalf of Excom.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Thank you. That is the question I was wanted to ask you when you must have been on mute. If you heard the meeting, I’m happy to say here we go mate, take this back to them, but say we stand ready to be called in and discuss things more, and what our next steps are, and whatever Alan was saying in terms of next steps. It’s very important that we are not letting this issue die in the gutter here.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*Yes, I am prepared to do that, and that is why I welcome Alan’s note. He said he was going to send out the talking points, and I can use those talking points in reference to the meeting. I wanted to be on the meeting for that specifically, because I was anticipating that this is how it would come out.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay. That’s good.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I hadn’t counted on that timeframe, but I’ll try.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*Do as best as you can, Alan, I understand.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Sebastian?
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*My point is that first I think we need to be clear with LACRALO that this (inaudible 2:12:33.6) second, I agree with Alan, and I want to ask if we can have a – I don’t know the right word – a review for decisions, because I think the Board make a decision and the staff is not doing what is on the decision of the Board. We need to find a way to fix that, because just not understandable by people member of our ALSs.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Luckily, Avery and Steve have set the stage for us to do that.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Sorry, Alan. I missed that.
>>>> **
>>>> Sebastian Bachollet:(Inaudible 2:13:27.4) can help us also.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I said luckily Avery and Steve Medalis, in their comments in the public forum, talking about constituency support, laid the groundwork that the Board agreed that they will have to look at this, because the words in the document regarding constituency support are not clear, and they need to be clarified and that might require some budget shifts.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*But that’s not as pro-active as what you were proposing. I think what Sebastian was talking about was a reconsideration of –
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*But that’s what they’ve already agreed to look at, in terms of GNSO constituencies.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes. But if we ask for a reconsideration, that’s a reconsideration of the whole resolution. You hear what I’m saying, Sebastian? It’s not the reconsideration of a section of the resolution. That would be reconsideration of the acceptance of the FY11 budget.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*I don’t think reconsideration of that at the formal Board level is what we want to do.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I think it’s got a snowball’s chance in hell. Because it would be a crippling blow to have a current year budget to need to stop and be reconsidered. I think that would be, perhaps, less productive than the way forward that Alan is proposing. You understand that Sebastian, or no?
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*I understand, but I think we need to find a way. If we have trouble we can go to (inaudible 2:15:17.1) here we have – we disagree, the way to start entreating the Board decision. How we can ask for something, because it’s not a reconsideration as yet, but what we can do.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay, well I think with our talking points for the meeting we will be furthering that.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*The last thing we want to do, is do something so visible that the rest of the community say there goes At-Large and ALAC asking for more money again.
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Again. Exactly, so we’re just starting to get some credibility. It would be nice not to go back to the bad old days, and lose the more generic support that we now have, that I thought we were a long way off getting just a year or two ago. Okay. Anything else then?
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*Not on that subject, but I would discover one little trouble on the direction of the ALAC—
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Sorry, Sebastian, say again. I’ve got a really bad line. The direction of which?
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*Maybe my line is not – sorry. It’s about the election process for the RALO to elect a member of the ALAC. I find some diversity, maybe discrepancy, but diversity on how it’s operating in each region, and I want to make sure it’s done properly.
>>>> I just read MOU from the LACRALO for example, and it says specifically that the two elected members by the RALO need to be taken into account, and when you look to the way of doing the election, for example, it says they can’t have somebody from Jamaica.
>>>> And that seems to be not that great, and I don’t think – I have trouble with the way it’s under, in – because that means that it would have been the same for the other regions, and I’m not sure it is all the same. I want to be sure that we are not doing something in contradiction with MOU and by-laws or RALOs. I don’t know if it’s clear what I said.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*No, I’m needing help there.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Any reference to Jamaica is – I presume the two ALAC members from the region cannot be from the same country.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*Yes, but today the member is from – the only one who will stay is from Brazil and she’s Argentinian. Maybe it should be written other than Argentine can be candidates. But I don’t know why Carlton came through the Nominating Committee; it’s his country of residence and his citizenship taken into account in this.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Only if the rules of procedure say that, but I don’t think – do the LACRALO rules of procedure say this explicitly saying that they also look at the country of the Noncom appointees.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*It’s not reason like that I brought that to you, It’s given us some thought for the European region is why I’m asking.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*In the case of each of the RALOs, it’s again knowledge of the RALOs. In the APRALO situation, then once again we do have a situation where you need to be from a different country for selection, but that we’re happy to just have a domicile.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*The question is do you count the Noncom appointee as one of the forbidden country? Certainly, in North America, Gareth is from Canada, and so am I.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Well, again, it depends. The Noncom has previously looked at what the currently maintained sitting people in the ALAC are when they make their decision.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*So that’s the Noncom has to take that into account.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*It’s Noncom that has to take that into account, it depends on the regional rules, and I don’t think there’s anything in the regional rules that say they do have to do that.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*Then there is something to fix on the website about the election of the LACRALO. I guess.
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*I will look into that. I’m looking into their operating procedures.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Carlton, you were there when they were built. What’s your view?
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*Carlton, again you may be on mute.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I understand why the Noncom needs to look at who the current ALAC reps for a region are, when they’re putting someone in –
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Is that really a rule that they honor? I don’t think so. Surely the Noncom may choose to, but I don’t believe it’s a Noncom restriction.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes, it’s not a rule, but they can if they want to. Yes.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*For the other positions like the GNSO, they can’t do two from the same region, but here they’re doing it on a regional basis, so that doesn’t count. I believe they only look at regions; they do not look at countries, from the Noncom. Any given Noncom could generate whatever rules they want, I suppose, but I don’t believe that Noncom –
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Well, I am aware of some Noncoms that have looked down to a country level.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Okay, maybe the will.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*But I think it’s as you say. It is a Noncom by Noncom decision.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*Okay, sorry to brought that up, but if –
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*I’m not sure that ALAC can do anything about it, though.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*No, but ALAC should do something because I want to make sure that a rule is followed well. If it is just a question in the by-laws or the operating principle of the region, that’s okay.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Is Carlton still on the call? Do we know?
>>>> **
>>>> *Heidi Ulrich:*He’s been dropped. We’re dialing him back.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Okay.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Okay.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Sebastian, do you see the lack of consistence across the regions as a problem?
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*That’s one of my points. We need to work on that but not here now. My only point was I was looking to them for you, and specifically elected people, I can read it to you what it says, and it is clear that if they add something in the rules of procedure I don’t know it, but it’s written in the MOU that LACRALO will choose two individuals to serve, the selected representative must be a member of different ALSs, must have principle residences in different countries of the region, and then –
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*And that is different words but exactly the same as APRALO does as well. We can’t have two people from China, or two people from India, or two people from any other country.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*But that’s only the two appointees of the RALO, not considering the Noncom appointment.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Correct, although, we appoint considering the Noncom. So in APRALO, we choose to do that as well.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Is it in your rules? Or you just choose to?
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*It’s not in our rules, but we choose to do so. Our rules state that we cannot be in the same country. We have to be different nationalities.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*So you’re implying what LACRALO is doing.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Exactly what LACRALO is doing. Exactly and I guess if we had two people in from Germany, we’d have a fairly dim view of them being regional representation.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*The problem is not – yes, it is one of the reasons I am asking that is we may arrive with people living in different country with the same nationality. Imagine that Adam stay on ALAC and we elect Christopher Wilkinson. One is living in Japan and the other in Belgium, but both are born in UK.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*And I find those things absolutely farcical if not ridiculous. They do border on the ridiculous.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*But of course, you’re talking about the luxury of regions with more than three countries in them.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*Okay, sorry for bringing that today, but –
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yes, I mean, it’s not to do with credibility, and from an Asia Pacific point of view, we are a huge region, and if had no choice but to appoint two people from China, it would be a sad pathetic state indeed.
>>>> We need to bring regional diversity to the ALAC so our view is to try and maximize our cultural diversity spread in, and not to duplicate a country or nationality wherever possible. We’ve had situations where we have decided against island Oceania or New Zealand into leadership roles, because I’m still serving from the (inaudible 2:26:30.9).
>>>> So my continued service to APRALO on the ALAC has effectively blocked other people from being appointed in APRALO’s choices. So when I bow out at the end of next year, hopefully the new talent will come in. But they’re actually being stopped because of me, from probably doing an effective job.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*So all we’re saying is what LACRALO is saying seems to be consistent with what other people have done in the past and continue to do.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*Yep. But is it a hard and a fast rule for EURALO? Not unless it’s in the regionals rules.
>>>> **
>>>> *Sebastian Bachollet:*Okay.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*But the Noncom part, is Alan wasn’t a Noncom appointee, I guess Asia would have questioned why are there all these bloody Canadians. And the answer would be it is NORALO’s choice, and that is a fair enough answer. Would we have asked the question? Probably.
>>>> **
>>>> *Carlton Samuels:*It is because they are just one country and that’s all.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*They’re fairly limited in terms of numbers of countries compared to Asia and Europe.
>>>> **
>>>> *Alan Greenberg:*Well, luckily we do have three countries, but that’s fortuitous and not by design.
>>>> **
>>>> *Cheryl Langdon-Orr:*All right, ladies and gentlemen. Have we had enough yet because I certainly have. Thank you one and all. Good bye.
>> -End of Recorded Material-