Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, well good morning, good afternoon and good evening. This is the ALAC Ex-Com community conference call on the 18th of May, 2011, and the time is 1305 UTC. We have a full agenda yet again, and the first thing we’ll start with is the roll call. Seth, could you please do the roll call?
Seth Greene: We have on the call Olivier Crépin-Leblond, Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Evan Leibovitch, Tijani Ben Jemaa, Carlton Samuels, Alan Greenberg, and from staff as of right now, it’s just me, Seth Greene. I think that’s all; did I miss anyone? Okay, thank you very much.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Seth, and we’ll quickly move on to the first item on the agenda, which is the review of the action items from the Ex-Com meeting of the 26th of April and the ALAC meeting of the 26th of April. I know that we have gone through them on the 28th, which was just a couple of days off from the 26th, but I thought it would be good to have an update on these.
I know they’re a little bit long, the ExCom effectively are – well, there are links to both, and we’ll start with the ExCom one, and I think that most of them are actually okay. Let’s have a look quickly; in the Wiki, ExCom to inform IT on which issues are important to be included in the (inaudible) space. Cheryl and others to work with [MA and RP] on ensuring our archival orphan confluence pages are found. Now, do we have an update on the Wiki?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We fear there are more of them [interference] there are more; now we have found a place we know them to be, but having found them is vastly different than having them accessible. For example, from the Asia/Pacific site, at some point somebody with Confluence skills or something to sit down and reattach or whatever. Alan found a few, I found a few, and that’s all that’s happened so far, but there have been of us meeting on the odd link over, continually a work in progress. I mean, I’m relieved that some of them aren’t lost, but there are still some I haven’t found yet.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thanks for your comment, Cheryl, and I totally agree. In fact, I also think that the automated sub-menu structure, which is usually found in the gray box, which is directly related to the actual way the files are organized, is a bit of a mess. This will also have to be looked at, and certainly cleaned up. Ongoing is – yes, Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Just on that, you can quote a mess there, just to make it really clear when people are going over the record what you’re referring to, Olivier. What annoys the living daylights out of me, amongst many other things today for some reason, this has been over several weeks is if you just open from the highest level in the hierarchy, the JAS work space, and try and find the most recent area where all the activities has gone on on the second milestone report completed, it’s – I think skewered is the nicest thing I can say, as to where it is in that gray box on the left hand side.
There isn’t even a – they have to go into a sub-menu and then somehow remember that you might have it under references, and that’s everywhere. That’s just an example. Some rationalization when those hierarchies are set up, we need a standardized procedure or something. When you’ve got an additional charter and a huge amount of work to find it in layer three in that gray box left hand menu under a title which at very best, doesn’t lend itself to indicating what might be there, looking for references in part two of a Work Group activity and a major milestone report, isn’t terribly intuitive of anything. I think it’s appalling.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: All good points. Alan?
Alan Greenberg: Yeah, unfortunately, the problem that Cheryl just described is exactly the reason we end up with orphans. We tend to hang page off a page off a page off a page, and rarely go back and point to the important pages, from the root of that section. So as pages become obsolete in the middle, the ones hanging off of them disappear, and somehow we need the discipline to, when we start a new page, to think about how it’s going to be organized and accommodate that. It’s a result of all the ad hoc work that we do, and we tend to just hang things off things ad infinitum.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Cheryl has mentioned, as an example, the JAS Working Group. This is a cross-community thing; is it then up to us to deal with that, or would that have to be dealt with by staff in charge of the JAS?
Alan Greenberg: That’s really moot, in my mind. You know, if we can fix the problem, then we can suggest other people use our methodology, because we’re not doing that well on our own pages, and asking that question, I think just puts off the question. I don’t think it’s being handled very well right now. To be honest, we’re not handling our own website real well, so --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We’re talking about primary pages, which are, as far as I can tell, always at least in the beginning, set up by staff. Now the milestone report with the community feedback page may have been set up by a Work Group member, but it hangs off pages which are layered above it, and its flows, which are obviously stated.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If they have a heading or a sub-heading of their own, then again, who set up the under pages is not important; it’s the landing page.
Alan Greenberg: The primary one above that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah.
Alan Greenberg: I, on a regular basis, want to go back and find out when the decision was made at a 2005 Board meeting or a GNSO meeting or DNSO meeting; and although, occasionally records don’t exist because they just weren’t kept up to date at the time, I can go back into the GNSO agenda and go back five years and find things. With us, going back a year is virtually impossible. We create new ways of indexing things and never cross connect them.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We just need some standard operating procedures.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: May I ask both of you to continue working with Roman and with Seth on this?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: In all our spare time, eh Alan? Yes.
Alan Greenberg: Yes, that would be my answer. Yes.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I’m not sure what the spare part is, I’m not familiar with that word.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It means leave it on the to do list, it’s not a top priority, but it’s something that needs to be done.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: It’s just something that I find a lot of people are frustrated with, and obviously yes, we need to – we’re aware of it, we need to find the time and of course, it would be so much easier if we had enough staff to be able to deal with this, but that’s another matter, for the time being. One also has to appreciate Seth has been working very hard on a lot of other things --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, exactly.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: We just don’t have enough people.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Just leave it as a carry over item, and it will be carried out or infinitely present.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So we’ll continue on the ais, and the next one is the staff to prepare Wiki page for the drafting of the brief ALAC document on the applicant guidebook, and I understand that was done. Or was that not done? Just checking.
Seth Greene: Yes, actually that was done, Olivier.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. So useful collaboration, so that page was done, but it wasn’t filled yet, so we’ll probably discuss this right afterwards. Staff to send out calls for comments on the brief ALAC documents on the applicant guidebook; has this been sent?
Seth Greene: I do not believe it’s been sent yet, actually. We can do that right after this meeting.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, make sure there’s something on the page to [interference]
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: There’s nothing on the page at the moment.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, at the moment it says title. It doesn’t look like it’s to be used for collaboration at all. I wouldn’t do an announce space on that page.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: We’ll discuss the applicant guidebook comments later on in the call. At-Large Working Groups, some future challenges, Jean-Jacque Subranet and Evan Leibovitch to be interim co-chair of the At-Large Working Group on the future challenges, and Marc Rotenberg to be interim ALAC and liaison rapporteur. What I can say from that ai is that I was asked by JJS as to what was the status of the Working Group, and I advised him of the action item in the minutes of our last meeting, and I haven’t heard anything else since. Seth, have you heard anything from him?
Seth Greene: No, I have actually emailed him, but have not heard back.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: He’s in China now.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: He’s in China?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: A month is a small amount of time for things like this.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So we’ll just send him something again? Or just let him come back to us in time?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Leave it as an open item, it’ll be raised again at the next ALAC meeting, it will be an ai then, and if nothing’s happened, then you carry it over.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Fine, so the next two is Review Team to be invited to be meet with At-Large on Sunday morning in Singapore for 45 minutes. I gather that has been done? Seth, do you have any idea – we might be able to touch on that a bit later on when we look at the Singapore schedule.
Seth Greene: Yes.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: the GAC, we’ll say have been in touch and will follow up. So that’s moving forward. BC, same thing as well; we are having a breakfast on Tuesday morning with the BC, all of ALAC and most of the BC, including some of their “friends” and colleagues. ExCom to organize an informal meeting with selected registrars, Michele, etc., and I guess Gisella is going to lead on the organization of this, and that’s probably, likely, that’s to move forward. Sunday afternoon to include a series to communication exercises; can someone help me on this one? Alan?
Alan Greenberg: My hand was up for something earlier, so I apologize. Go on with this and I’ll come back.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The discussion that we had with Scott. It’s bringing in having got feedback from the various regions.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So that, I gather, is moving forward. And then we’ll then move to the next page, which is the ALAC meeting action items.
Alan Greenberg: Can I get a mic for a second?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, please Alan.
Alan Greenberg: I sent a message and either I didn’t get any answers or I missed it; does anyone recall any discussion in San Francisco about a public meeting related to resellers? I know I had a conversation with Pam Little; I don’t remember if it was in the public meeting or at the bar – that the discussion of resellers comes up regularly, and maybe we should try to schedule some kind of meeting. It’s clearly too late for Singapore now, but I just want to know is that something that was a private thing, or was this actually discussed in public?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Anyone wish to answer this?
Alan Greenberg: If no one remembers, the answer is it was private.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I’m not a bit certain I’ve seen it; if no one else remembers it, it must be private. I was not in the room a lot because of ccNSO.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I recall this discussion, and yes there was a question raised about the resellers and that we might wish to discuss this with Pam Little. In fact, if I remember, and this is all from memory, and I would hope that Gisella makes it by the time we speak about the Singapore.
Gisella Gruber-White: I’m here.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Oh, you are here. Fantastic. There is going to be something with clients, isn’t there?
Gisella Gruber-White: Yes, I think the reseller will be discussed with the grants, that the reseller will come under compliance with [Maggie Surat] who is the new senior compliance director and Pam Little and [Burnett] will be invited to attend that as well. We haven’t slotted it into the agenda as yet.
Alan Greenberg: It’ll be discussed then, but it isn’t the section of public discussion I was thinking of, so I’ll deal with Pam and we’ll try to do it further the next meeting, wherever that is.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: By public discussion, did you mean cross-constituency open discussions, a big show type thing?
Alan Greenberg: I don’t think we got to that stage.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. We need to continue.
Alan Greenberg: It wasn’t just a closed ALAC meeting or something like that; it was something getting more light of day on issues, but I’ll follow up on it. Clearly, I dropped the ball, and I’ll do something on it for the future. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Alan. Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Just going on from what Alan was saying, I think we feel with our internal meetings that it’s something that needs to continue. I was just going to point out, of course as Alan knows very well, we are working with the registrars to come back on the agenda, so it’s something that will be a work in progress. I question the value of doing it at a meeting, which is not going to be attracting large numbers of people who are experts in the interface.
You know what I mean? I think we need to do more work with the registrars and the industry side on getting such a forum together in the future, to have one getting a lot of them well represented. I think we should probably note, as well having spoken to a few people in the industry week in and week out, as we do, don’t we Alan, compliance has had a couple of outreach interactions with them, and it’s a brave new world. So I think part of that brave new world, between compliance and industry, we may find there is opportunity for us to further this idea when we are meeting with them in Singapore. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl. Alan?
Alan Greenberg: I just wanted to raise something that was mentioned yesterday in the PEDNR meeting; I’m not sure Olivier, if you or Cheryl caught it when it was said, but if you share it with others, as you’re aware, we’ve gone through almost two years of PEDNR. Through much of that time, the registrars were saying “Gee, everything’s working okay. We really don’t see the need for policy.”
And now that we’ve pretty well locked in that there will be some policy change, including a minimal but nevertheless a guaranteed renewal time after expiration, James mentioned yesterday when we were talking about changing the eight days to something larger, that there’s a lot of registrars who, and I’ll try to quote him verbatim, “give them zero days and just think that’s what it should be”. Implying that there are people who don’t allow renewal after expiration, and tough luck to their registrants, something which was essentially denied vehemently until now, where we’re using the rationale why eight days precludes them giving up a lot.
So it’s interesting how these little facts come out, that are stonewalled all the way along. “Stonewalled” isn’t a fair word but we need more open discussion and try to bring facts to light. We haven’t done that yet. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Alan. I think I’ll move on then, to the next part, which is the ALAC meeting action items; ALAC meeting from the 26th of April 2011. The first action item was effective items to do with the Working Group future challenges, and I touched on that a little bit earlier, so I think we can pass over this. The next one is the review of the At-Large Working Groups, and I gather that we have not had much time to do some work on which Working Groups to be revived and which should be closed. This is something which I guess I should start sending an email out and start a discussion on the list. Anyone had to contribute to this? Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I would have thought a productive activity was a face to face in Singapore. We have people who walk in the room and have coffee, or you entertain until such time as [interference] and they all go back to their regions and populate it.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, I’m happy with that. Thank you. Okay, so let’s do that then. It certainly lightens the load that we have prior to Singapore, and --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That was my intention.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Great, at least one more thing to do. Talk to Ramos about his name, that’s completed. Cheryl has mentioned the membership list of the Work Group on Wiki on future structure, accountability and transparency of ICANN. That’s completed. So then the formal note of thanks to staff for the confluence Wiki guide, that was done. The staff also sent the Wiki guide to the Board, I understand that the Wiki guide was also sent to the ccNSO?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, thank you for that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So the next one is the proposed ALAC statement to the Board on the RAA negotiations, and that was done. After that resolution and consumer trust, competition and innovation. Sebastian will have to come back to the ALAC by the 29th of April with additional information. He has come back, with not much new information, unfortunately. It seems to be a process that is not moving forward very fast. Alan was supposed to forward any information on the consumer issue to the ALAC list. Do we have any update on this, Alan?
Alan Greenberg: I looked at that yesterday in preparing for the meeting. I don’t remember what that was, to be honest.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It was Rosemary was going to be able to report on the GNSO meeting, and in fact what happened with that Alan, if you didn’t need to pass it on, you certainly were going to, but in fact I thought it came back to us via Rosemary, via Olivier. Anyway-
Alan Greenberg: Okay, I do recall that. I missed that meeting, that GNSO meeting, unfortunately, which is why I lost touch with it.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, and I understand that the – Alan, you’ve just raised your hand?
Alan Greenberg: Sorry, I was trying to put it down, not realizing --
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I understand from liaising with Rosemary that she is working on setting up a session in Singapore.
Alan Greenberg: I do know that constituency is back to a constituency related to people who do financial transactions on the web, as opposed to the wider definition of consumers that we had talked about at one point.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Sounds as if it’s bordering on schizophrenia now.
Alan Greenberg: There are discussions, and they don’t always reach the conclusions we wanted.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Evan?
Evan Leibovitch: Hi there, thanks. I’ve been briefly in contact with Beau on this, the frustration level is rising tangibly. This whole thing about restricting the consumers constituency, the ecommerce, is something that is being done against the wishes of the people who started the constituency, and is being imposed upon them by the NCSG. So let’s make this very clear. The attempts to create a consumer stakeholder group are being met with substantial opposition by the established parties.
Alan Greenberg: Who in the NCSG is doing that pushing, and Rosemary doesn’t seem like the kind of person to be pushed, by me.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Not Rosemary.
Alan Greenberg: This is a recorded call. Definitely not Rosemary. No no, she doesn’t seem the kind of person to yield to pushing, is what I said.
Evan Leibovitch: I’ll just say, having spoken to Beau, there is a couple of individuals in the NCSG, most of whom are coming from the NCUC side of things, who are complaining so much about potential redundancies that they are making a smaller and smaller and smaller push to charter for this group to fill, to the point where we’re back where we started before Nairobi, where there was all sorts of in-fighting, and going back to what is a consumer and all of this crap. And who is the NCUC person that was supposed to be working with Beau on it? His name has escaped me for the moment. I can find it, but I can just tell you, from Beau’s side of things, this has been a very, very harrowing experience.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you.
Evan Leibovitch: It continues to be an uphill climb.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Alan. Cheryl? Alan – Evan, I’m sorry. Evan.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It’s okay, we’re like a big family at the dinner table; you can get our names wrong occasionally. Cheryl, for the record. Look, I understand and boy do I recognize the similarity of the frustration we’ve seen in the new constituency issues within part of the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group in the bicameral house in the GNSO. But that’s not actually what we should be concerned about. It’s the agenda item we need to be concerned about, and this agenda item is about the consumer choice, competition and innovation for resolution, is what Uncle Bruce asked GNSO and us to look at.
So as a way of circling back to making queue in a public forum, what will end users and consumers might actually think if the definition of a consumer that could indeed be used in something like, gee, a consumer constituency. Getting on to the job of having this meeting, and something happening in Singapore and something happening, obviously, especially after that, where as an ultimate multi-stakeholder model, we do establish and agree on definitions of consumer.
We can, in fact, guard it in such a way, away from this narrowing and hopefully alleviate some of the frustration. So by keeping to what’s not on our to do list, let’s make sure that whatever we do do will be meeting the Board resolution on consumer choice, competition and innovation, that we do our darndest to have the outcomes as to definition of what is a consumer and therefore one would assume carry into what might be appropriate for clarification in a consumer constituency, in the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group to be suitable, and as close to what real end users and consumers would understand is reasonable. I think we can attack this from a pincer movement. Right now we need to get the agenda in Singapore to reflect that less than subtle approach. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: May I ask – thank you Cheryl, very much, and may I ask the staff whether it’s Gisella to follow up and find out what is the status of the transcript for this meeting? I understand we have so far let Rosemary be in the driving seat for this.
Gisella Gruber-White: The consumer workshop? The consumer workshop is scheduled on Wednesday, the 22nd of June from 11:00 to 12:30 and it is Margie Milam from ICANN staff who is driving this meeting. Rosemary has recently changed jobs, and as well as she’s had a bereavement in the family, and I believe Margie’s driving this. I’m just following up to make sure what we need to do if we want ALAC representation as well.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Perfect, thank you. Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Just to that, usually the staff contacts [interference] it might be extremely wise and politic, and I do use that term advisedly, for the organizer, in other words, make sure Margie knows, that something that has the words consumer interest and everything else in that Board resolution would be of extreme interest to the Government Advisory Committee, who are representing their consumers and end users, and if it’s put on a day where we know where the GAC is in closed session, that might not be the smartest thing in the known universe. In other words, don’t have anyone inadvertently stick their head in a guillotine. So just get them to check very carefully that they have not only reached out to the At-Large Advisory Committee, and to At-Large regions, but also the other public interest groups that they should be thinking about.
If we go back to our confrontation with Heather, you’ll know why I’m beginning to make sure that happens, but it’s also something that meeting planners have been guilty of again and again and again, right back to oh, gee, when we first put a Chairs list together to try and get a cross community meeting at an ICANN meeting many years ago. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl. I think we’ve gone through this subject, we know what to do next, so I suggest that we move on on our long list of action items. The next one, if no one else has a comment on this, the next one is the identification of data to be shared with registrars. We had a meeting with the registrars, a conference call with the registrars with a couple of people from the registrars, and unfortunately I don’t seem to have seen the minutes of the action items from that meeting. Do we have an update on this, Seth? Seth, you might be muted.
Seth Greene: Sorry about that, Olivier. Yes, I will look through the minutes for those as well. I suspect that whatever the problem with the list that I think Alan had discovered yesterday is probably affecting these also. But Gisella is trying to get the recordings and transcripts for those meetings, and I’ll look for the Wiki page that the minutes are on as well.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you. I think we can move on, from there, since this is in progress. So the next one is Danny Younger’s comment regarding cyber-squatting registrars, and there, I’m afraid nothing appears to have been done. Is it just the sending of an email to Danny?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No, no, no, no, no, no --- no, no, no, no, no.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Cheryl, please advise, because I remember you said what’s supposed to happen, and I’m afraid reading it back it doesn’t sound like anything.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: What is written is what we said needs to be done. That is a matter that we will discuss in our direction in Singapore with (inaudible). So we can take that back out of the agenda and that’s done. We just need to make sure it gets into the agenda.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Fantastic, at least we’ve got an action item that means something. Okay, perfect, so that’s something we’ll put on the compliance agenda. The next one, a cross-community Work Groups, the CWGs, ALAC to look at ecology evolution of WHOIS service. Do we have an update on that? I understand we have a meeting relating to WHOIS in Singapore.
Carlton Samuels: We will meet with the Review Team.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: With the Review Team, yes Carlton. So I guess that’s also in hand then.
Carlton Samuels: It’s on the list, we need to put that on the agenda. If you remember, the WHOIS Review Team, the announcement and the coverage did not expressly say they were going to look at new technologies. We had suggested in our response that they take those in conceptual stage and go through, that’s something we need to press.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so we’ll have that again before Singapore.
Carlton Samuels: Yes.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Carlton. And then the last action item is a call for community volunteers for IDN variant TLD case study teams, and that was kicked toward Edmun Chung and he, as far as I understand, has taken the lead in organizing. I have conversed with him, so --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And that will be fine, because he needs people with specific skill sets on that team. It will be a very lean team.
Carlton Samuels: I would agree, we don’t need a lot of people there who don’t know about the subject.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: They’ll be ditched, it won’t be a matter of should have, it just will not happen, it’s not part of… I’m part of the Work Group that advised on how this Work Group should be set up, so it’s a very particular skill set needed.
Carlton Samuels: Better to have one person – what I’m saying is better to have one person than to have three people who don’t know anything about --
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Just for the record, I’m aware that EURALO’s newest prospective ALS is based in Ukraine, and we have had already on the last EURALO discussion a discussion with members of that ALS who are aware and who are knowledgeable about the variants in Cyrillic characters, so they might wish to join as well.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Hang on, it’s not a matter of joining. There is opportunity. Like any work to make a difference you don’t have to actually be in the Work Group, you know.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: It’s just about getting them involved, though. Go ahead, Cheryl, I’m sorry.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Why don’t you just draw a lamb to the slaughter? It would be faster and easier, Olivier. It is a totally focused case study high mettle technical expertise required, and we made sure there were Cyrillic experts in there. Now, the newbies need to be interacting with those, not sitting around the banquet table. It’s not – not everything happens in the Work Group room.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, I understand the people who admitted the interest can best help out with the UA/Cyrillic characters that work, and --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Great, so if the current Cyrillic person drops dead, that’ll be good. We want one from each language.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Uno.
Carlton Samuels: I agree with Cheryl; this is what – if you look at what the request was, it really was somebody that has depth as well as breadth. So I totally support that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That doesn’t mean that there’s no contributions to be made, there is.
Carlton Samuels: And I support that too. They can make contribution from the outside, but for the team itself, At-Large wants to ask somebody, sure, who really understands and in charge of the details of this thing.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Before we leave, because it does go back to the Work Group resuscitation and revitalization, I attended the Use of Country Code & Territory Names meeting where, as you all remember, we had. I want to say ISOC but…The ccNSO rep was there. We also had a rep put in from each of the regions. Now once we had representation from all of the regions, it was an extraordinarily poor showing in the Work Group, and for the very, very first meeting, I’m delighted to report that Eduardo joined me. Now, you know, if we’ve got a roll call, and we’ve got people who put themselves forward and the regions have endorsed and ALAC has then endorsed them as representatives, the least they can do is send an apology.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: That’s correct, yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If this continues to the second meeting, I’m going to be asking you, Olivier, as Chair, to read the riot act to these people, because if you cannot attend, you’d better damn well at least send an apology. If you can’t attend two or three meetings in a row, you better replace yourself. But Eduardo at least didn’t realize how embarrassing that was, because he hadn’t had the experience of being let down again, and again, and again, as I have, having people say “Oh, I have to be at that table, it’s essential that I’m there at that table.” We get them to that table, and then no one knows what they look like, sound like, or hear anything from them. I didn’t want to raise that at the ALAC meeting, but I’m happy to raise it here instead. For now.
Alan Greenberg: Cheryl, just to be clear; you said Eduardo did attend?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: He was the only one who came. All credit to him, and absolute disgust with the other four. I’m not representing APRALO, I’m representing ALAC there.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl, and I totally agree with you. I would be happy if you pointed me to this. I have a lot of things to keep track of, so the idea of being on many Working Groups and not attending and not sending apologies is something which is --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I was going to raise it within the ALAC meeting; I’m happy to do so, because it was beyond annoying. If it happens again, then I think that the ALAC needs to realize and the regional reps in the ALAC need to get their regions to understand, and their regional input people in the Work Group to understand that they can expect a – what hopefully won’t be a frequent event, slap on the wrist directly from you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And just for the record, I have given a slap on the wrist to several people who did not attend the ALAC meeting and did not send their apologies last time. Some have responded and apologized profusely, and given reasons; some have not, just for the record.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That’s at least keeping our dirty linen in our own room.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Exactly.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Out in the middle of the field with every other part of ICANN.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I know, it does reflect very badly on everyone else, and it certainly makes us look stupid.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, so you’re all ready for me to be the grumpy person at the meeting; I can do that. Or I can hold it for another meeting, but just for you to be aware, ExCom, it’s on my to do list.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl. And now I expect that we can finally move off the first five minutes of this call, and go on to the next item, although this has been very helpful, to go through all the action items. The next thing is the open policy issues, and we have three links on our agenda, which effectively are the current public comments and also the At-Large policy development page, which gives us links to all of the policy statements that we have recently made or are in the process of being made, and one which is the policy advice document, the pad.
Unfortunately, the pad is not that much up to date. Can I ask Carlton, that you have a look at this, with Dev? Unfortunately we were supposed to have Matt’s work on this also, to help out. Unfortunately, Matt Ashtiani is still unable to spend as much time with us as he was supposed to be able to do, due to the fact that he has no replacement so far in Travel. And he also is not given much help by some of our members, who have given him much trouble in travel aid, as though they think this is just something they can poke around in.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: So essentially normal then, eh?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Essentially normal; the poor chap has had to follow up several times with several people. In my view, the policy advice calendar, and especially that Google worksheet is extremely helpful, and certainly something which keeps me sane, somehow. So it would be really appreciated if that was up to date.
Carlton Samuels: Yes, we can do something. I will get with Dev, and we will work on it. It’s not working the way it’s supposed to, actually.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thanks Carlton. So we’ll quickly look at this. Cheryl, you put your hand up?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Alan has his hand up.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, Alan, sorry. Alan?
Alan Greenberg: On this, when we went to this, I expressed some concern about an automated process that when it stopped working would be difficult to fix and only very specialized people could fix it, and I think that’s where we are right now. Whether we use an automated process or manual, it’s got to be up to date. If that means we go back to a manual spreadsheet for a while, while we fix the technology, I think that’s more important than – I’m not sure than what. But it’s really crucial that when we go to this at any given point in time, it’s as accurate and reasonably up to date as it can be. I know we have staff problems, too, but it makes it real hard to manage when this happens. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Alan. Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thanks, I just wanted to make sure that we’re very clear that we’re not complaining about the fact that staff don’t have the bandwidth to do it – that’s just very, very upsetting that the staff don’t have the bandwidth to do it because they’re still doing other things and other things are making their life quite unreasonable at the moment.
So it’s in no way a criticism of that, but we do recognize that Dev did say he’s more than happy to work with that, and obviously that will be with Carlton as his portfolio, obviously putting this on a this is what we focus on at the Singapore category. I think it’s important that we don’t lose track of these things, it’s also important we don’t see everything as being critical in our universe. This is hugely important, but we do go through this inane – what I can pick up from Alan, very manual way, at every ALAC meeting and every ExCom meeting, as well.
So what’s being developed of course was developed in the pre-confluence Wiki days as well. There are various plug ins that the confluence Wiki will allow us to use that weren’t even a possibility when this was created in a social text world, using Google docs. I think when staff – and I don’t mean our staff, I mean IT staff – can raise it here after whatever is between them and the Singapore meeting, there might be opportunity for a little script writing and things to be done to make it all better.
We need to recognize that it is important, it is essential, we will keep it on our urgent to do list; but I don’t think we need to put anybody against the wall and try and shoot them over it, yet. We’re managing, and also the outcomes of recommendations from the ATRT, the outcomes of recommendations that are in the preparatory matters of the public participation Committee, will also keep helping all of this get better, but that’s still reactive rather than proactive in the situation, we just need to be sure we can get the technology put together slightly better, and also meets the actual implementation as opposed to the planned implementation of things that came out of the ALAC review. So it’s just a matter of timing and getting it on the appropriate agendas at the appropriate time. I think we discuss this face to face in Singapore and we may (inaudible) the work between Singapore and Dakar.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, thank you Cheryl, and I note that Carlton has written on the chat that he has spoken to Dev, on this subject.
Carlton Samuels: Yes, we spoke about it. In fact, we are trying to transition the thing; we know it is good for us to keep it updated, we’re just working through issues.
Alan Greenberg: The point I made was not really damning anyone, just that we need something, as Cheryl pointed out, we review this regularly and some of us go into it inter-sessionally to try and find out what the status of something is, and when it’s out of date, it just causes more problems. So whether it’s manual, on an interim basis or automated, I think we have to – it’s not the highest priority thing we have, but it causes an awful lot of time and effort that could be avoided if it could be kept up do date.
Carlton Samuels: I agree, Alan; I agree.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And one thing that was of concern to me was that we do have this tendency to sometimes tackle these statements at the very last moment, the last thing I want to be accused about, and I have been – all of us want to be accused about it not to give enough time to our members to respond to some of the requests for comments that we are asking.
Carlton Samuels: We are already accused of that. It is something that will happen to us all the time. I made the point to you the other day, that we should keep you, because a lot of that is coming through because there are some people, especially from our region that have been grousing about ExCom, and they don’t understand the amount of work it takes to get this thing done and going.
I think they understand, but they just don’t wish to acknowledge. So they’re using the issue of the timing as the basis to say the ExCom is making all of the decisions, that’s the locus of the statement, but I know it’s not about that. The people who are complaining are not, themselves, introducing anything new to the process. What they are doing is bitching about the ExCom, the structure, that’s what they’re doing.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Situation normal.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, well without further ado, let’s look into what we’ve had so far. I guess we’re all aware of the different comments that we’ve made. There are a number of forthcoming comment periods ending first on the 25th of May, about proposed MOBI contract amendments. I realize there used to be a .mobi liaison --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: There still is, (inaudible). It’s a two year appointment, which has been renewed two times. He has another 12 months to serve on that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Should we have the liaison to work some statement out?
Carlton Samuels: Can I tell you, I looked at it and I didn’t see anything of great note for us to mention. I didn’t see any flags on it, we might ask him to look at it again, as a secondary, but I looked at the announcement.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I’d call for his opinion.
Carlton Samuels: Yes, that’s what I’m saying. I would suggest we call for his opinion. I personally looked at what it asks, and I didn’t see any flags. But again, I would say pass it to him and let him advise.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So that’s an ai, thank you, Carlton. The next one is academic representation in NomCom, and it’s on the 20th of May. Any notes on this?
Carlton Samuels: I don’t think this is something that we need to say anything about.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I do. I think it should be shortened to – I think ALAC, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the ALAC record shows back to the current meeting, that we’ve been very supportive in principle, to expansion of these very specific --
Carlton Samuels: A specific seat on NomCom, we did say that back in Paris.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: --so we see the incredible amount of time wasting and ability to moralize and de-energize otherwise key individuals with the Consumer constituency, the same will happen in the academic one unless we stick our bid in to say “This is hugely important and it must be followed.” We must get onto it; I don’t think we need to be nit-picky about it, I just think we need to be supportive of the principle thereof. It’s part of the redesign, and it needs to happen.
Carlton Samuels: Well, you know, now that you say that and remind us of the frustration we had in the Paris meeting. I think it does need a statement.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: A very short one, a paragraph.
Carlton Samuels: I think it needs a statement, if we can connect what you said, I think that’s the statement. We agree in principle, because the principle is something we had engaged in Paris.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you. I do have to advise you that there is currently a motion in EURALO by Christopher Wilkinson to actually, I believe, disagree with taking away the teat for the academia --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, but isn’t that the NomCom part? Doesn’t that flow into how NomCom is structured around the pure academia?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, that’s correct. It basically starts with the idea if you’re going to remove an academic person, then effectively it gives less voice to non contracted parties, and I’m just doing this from memory from the meeting we had yesterday.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: When I read Christopher’s response, and I did actually read Christopher’s response --
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: On the EURALO list?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, basically I thought “well, that’s all very nice, and it’s not very wordy, but it actually isn’t what we’re being asked to respond to” (inaudible) so thank you for that, is my reaction. When there is a NomCom structural review again, that will be very useful input, I thought to myself.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Noted. He put it up on the EURALO list, and there will be a discussion based on that on our list in a couple of days.
Carlton Samuels: But as part of what Cheryl just said, also would be added to the statement. To the second sentence or third sentence in the paragraph. That would (inaudible) his objections, I would imagine. I haven’t read it exactly, but I’m going to read it --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I would rather wait and see what, indeed, more than an individual comes up with. Let’s see what happens when the region finished chewing this over, it will quite possibly not make the ALAC meeting, and may or may not make the input into this. The input into this should be, in principle, in support of the concept. Now what happens in the domino effect if and when that actually is enacted is important to think about, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not what we need to do now. I’d like to just do some of what we need to do, as opposed to what might be nice to philosophize about.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: What was proposed in the EURALO meeting was that if there is no objection to this, that will be carried over the ALAC; so we’re quite likely to receive it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, then if we receive it then we’ll discuss it.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, next looking at this, the fiscal year ’12 Security, Stability, and Resiliency framework, and we do have another part which is agenda item number three to discuss. So perhaps we’ll take this into touch until the next few minutes. Then the next one is the proposed ICANN process for having request of cross ownership restrictions for a listing of gTLDs. Any comments? Do we have to submit something on this one?
Carlton Samuels: That one should have some interesting discussions in the At-Large, and I think to make ourself – cover ourselves, we probably should do a little bit more pushing on this to see what happens. As you know, when we had the vertical integration Work Group, the At-Large was [several nines] 0:55:38.7 on it. That was with new gTLDs; I think you will probably have the same, if you talk about existing gTLDs, so I would suggest that this one, we start by pushing it out to the edge and let’s see what comes back.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So email the ALAC list?
Carlton Samuels: Yes.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So staff can have this as an action item, please. The next one is the draft financial year operating plan and budget ready for community consideration. That’s interesting. So that’s one which, yeah. That’s going to be also part of our discussion, I guess, in a few moments. You have all received a copy of the financial year ’12 budget as sent to me by finance, so I suggest we discuss this at the end, and I realize we’re really way over time already. We’re at two minutes past the hour already. Are you all okay with extending to half an hour?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If we have to, we need to also remember that a lot of what we’re talking about, we’ll have to talk about again at the ALAC meeting.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: We will, but I thought we might first wish to be a bit aware of what we feel.
Carlton Samuels: Apart from not getting most of the money that we wanted. I have a tele-com seminar that I’m presenting at 10:30, so I will need to break on the campus. It is going to be very difficult for me to get out of that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So then let’s arrange our – let’s move quickly to three. I guess three and four are really the important things that you need to take part in. Probably mostly four, the JAS Working Group, we can make the discussion on the financial year ’12 as a start framework quickly enough. The question is, does ALAC want to submit further comments to this?
Evan Leibovitch: Do you think it will be listened to more than the previous comments?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I don’t see any hands fighting to get up and saying yes. Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We don’t have to respond to every iteration of something that happens. If we’re going to – again, remember we will be meeting with the finance and budget staff in Singapore again. I thought – I know there’s an awful lot that we didn’t get, and an awful lot that we did. I think there’s a genuine intention, particularly when you look at the responses to the not funded, to come back to this and try again the following year. I think that’s a good thing, I think that should be recognized.
I also note that a lot of what we asked for, we got, but it’s not coming out of the budget specifically to an ACSO request; it’s being stuck in where it ought to be, and that’s in the general administration or translation or whatever budget is going on. All of those good things could be recognized. Maybe again, something as simple as not being a reaction to a public statement – we may want to, but certainly when we need to necessarily work staff in Singapore; we recognize that. Biting the hand that feeds you is not normally a successful way of good training techniques. I think we need to remember that. I think all of Asia/Pacific getting support for at least having some outreach or ability to get to meetings is a good thing. While we’re picking off a few things, we can also remind them that we will continue to ask for what we need.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Since this is very fresh in our heads and since we’ve just had this, perhaps we could discuss this further in the ALAC call in a week’s time, so we can pass over that now. Just for the record, I think we might have leaked from – I was mentioning the SSR framework, the Security, Stability, and Resiliency framework that you commented on the financial year ’12 budget. But that’s no worries. That’s fine. So if we’re okay with the financial year ’12 budget to move to next week, may I ask whether now we need to submit a further comment on the Security, Stability, and Resiliency framework of the DNS Review Team set of issues?
Carlton Samuels: Do we think there is anything that may have to be broken up into two parts? I saw the statement addressed to both areas; do we see anything else new that we can ask of the statement?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It is quite significant, it is a major foundation piece of work that needs to be done. It’s part of what ICANN has to focus on, and I think that’s been reflected in the FY12 budget that I was referring to, as well. So we’ve come together, and now I don’t necessarily think we do need to put anything else in, but whenever something falls into a liaison portfolio, I would strongly encourage us to ask the liaison to respond on that topic when we have a meeting. They can do that either in writing or at the actual meeting.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you very much, Cheryl. Without further ado, I suggest that we now move on to the JAS Working Group, the next steps. They mentioned Evan here, but I gather Evan and Carlton, you can speak to us on this. Thank you.
Carlton Samuels: The meeting that we had yesterday, the call, what we agreed to do was get staff help to begin the questions, and we will collate the responses. I personally think the response and I said it on the chat and I’ll say it now – Cheryl had a beautiful phrase, and kind of a paragraph in response online that I asked to reproduce from the recording, and I think for most of the questions that will be the answer. We are intending to have the work reported from the call later on this week, and we send it forward. That’s the first step.
The call on Friday after that, we intend to – or at least I intend to put on the agenda, whether or not we should have sent a response from the Board, sent some kind of vindictive guidance from the Board, what should we do? My thinking is that we should look at the other parts of the charter and we should proceed to put to the group whether or not we should then continue to work per the charter. My own sense is that we should stay the course, and try to produce something in keeping with the charter.
That’s what – we will put it to the group, but I can tell you that’s what my position is, that we have the charter, the charter is a guidelines here. Even if the Board comes back with a third rail I still believe that for very good reasons, we call the shots.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much Carlton. Any questions? I see that Cheryl has her hand up.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Cheryl has her hand up to draw you attention to what she’s now managed to find the link and put into the space, we need to correct – for some reason, I cannot remember what my log in is to Circle ID, so I have recreated a profile and I just haven’t got the blessing to be able to blog, or whatever it is, comment to people’s blogs. I read a lot of them, I don’t often get motivated to respond to them; there’s two I want to respond to.
If possible, Olivier, it might be even more appropriate to come from you, or on behalf of all of us; just to correct what is said in this Circle ID article. It’s all very nice for us to have made it clear to the GNSO Council, we need to make it clear to the reading public that the JAS Working Group did not submit a report directly to the Board. I think that’s something that can be put in the comments; not so much that there were comments to that article, but if we can arrange to have that, I’d be very happy.
Alan Greenberg: Are we still talking about Circle ID article?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes.
Alan Greenberg: Okay, because I did make a comment. I’m not saying Olivier shouldn’t make an official one, but there was a comment there.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: There was a comment from Alan. Alan did --
Carlton Samuels: I think there was a question from Eric --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Good, as long as it’s done. That was on my to do list, and if I refresh my page, good yes, now it’s there, so now it is done. But I just didn’t want that – I put that together earlier today to be sure we didn’t let that lapse. But we haven’t let it lapse, that’s fine. Eventually I’ll find out why I don’t have posting rights to Circle ID again.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: That Circle ID article was discussed with a couple of Board members when I was in Moscow last week, and it appears that some members of the Board do frown about having articles to pressure the Board one way or the other, as being something that is maybe not a good thing to do. Of course, that might be their own opinion. Do you, in general, think that it would be good for me to post to Circle ID from time to time? Or for us, I guess, to post to Circle ID.
Alan Greenberg: You’re talking about offering an article, not responding to one?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I don’t think we need to be seen as lobbyists. We can quietly buy them a beer and make sure they say what we want them to say, but correction of error is fine and should be done promptly, and thank you to everyone who did that. When I read that article this morning, I would have posted there and then, but I couldn’t. I’m delighted that Alan handled it.
Alan Greenberg: Maybe we’re talking about a different article, the one I’m talking about was a week ago.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yeah, May12th.
Alan Greenberg: May 12th .
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I got that in today’s email.
Alan Greenberg: Maybe there’s something new.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No, ICANN Tiptoes Through Political Minefield with new TLDs.
Alan Greenberg: You absolutely haven’t read it before?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I got it from today’s Circle ID link in my email. When I looked and read it today, there were no comments.
Alan Greenberg: Then there is a different article, and I better go look at it. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It’s not, I don’t think, because you’ve got comments there.
Alan Greenberg: Okay, okay.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Tijani, your hand is up?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, thank you Olivier. So for the next steps for the JAS, let’s see what is the situation now. You know what the JAS Working Group did several months of hard work to produce the milestone report. The milestone report is an official document that was submitted to the Board. The Board made some requests about the way to recognize the needy applicants. A new charter was -- two charters were adopted, and ALAC combined them into one that it adopted officially.
The composition of the Working Group changed and the newcomers were added, and the first call, it was decided that we address the items of our new mission, by creating Work Teams with specific tasks from the charter issues for each Work Team. Some Work Teams worked and produced language, there was a need for someone to combine the different languages in a single document; Avri volunteered to do so. She didn’t do it because there was a different understanding of the composition; and finally she gave up, and Evan volunteered.
It was very good because I asked him to come back another meeting, so Evan volunteered and we began to draft a new document, a new document from the beginning to the end, and all the items that we agreed on in the milestone report became the discussion.. The newcomers wanted to change everything, and they are right, but I think that the newcomers should first read what was produced before their arrival and agree on it, and they should also read the new charter and stick to it. I think that the Working Group has to work according to the charter. We produced now a new milestone report; for the next steps, I think that we have to stick to our mission and the charter. We have to expect and to stick to what was produced before.
The second milestone report is now a new produced document that you have to speak to. We don’t have to come after that and change everything. Otherwise we’ll not produce anything. The second thing, the feedback from the Board will be very important for our new steps, because if there is new questions we have to add them in our charter and we have to address them, too. There is probably a new mission – a new phase of our work, because it will be decided that it will be a panel then we (inaudible). So our new work has to be, I think, has to be well thought before. We have to have our mission very clear, our objectives very clear, and we have to stick to them. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Tijani. I was actually going to ask, I was looking at the voting that took place, and I noticed that you were listed as not having voted yet on this issue. Is there a reason?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: I wasn't on the statement of ALAC.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Correct, yes, you voted on the statement, but also voted on the endorsement of the second milestone report.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: I am very uncomfortable with part 3.2, and they expressed it very, very clearly. It is the only part that is really inside our mission, and we worked on it – we gave objective statements of the statement and they were contested. That’s normal, that’s right; I was expecting other objective elements, but unfortunately no objective elements, only subjective. I cannot guarantee that only the needy applicants will be granted.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If you’re abstaining, or voting against it, perhaps you might wish to have your comments recorded for the record; make a record on why you’re doing that just so that that isn’t just a “you didn’t vote” or you’re voting absent or you’re raising an abstention, but that you do also get the comments that you’ve raised here raised in a formal record. Maybe we could find a way of doing that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Record that, yeah.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Cheryl, if I didn’t vote it is because I am member of the ExCom and I don’t want a member of the ExCom to disapprove a producer of the group.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If you abstain, you can also put a comment in, and I think it’s quite right --
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, I will do.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Tijani; thank you Cheryl. Next is Evan.
Evan Leibovitch: I don’t know what to say. Tijani, I guess I’m really disappointed that you’re not being supportive at this point, considering how deeply you’ve been involved in it, and I’ll just leave it at that. As far as going forward, we really need to hit our instructions from the Board, and to a lesser extent the GAC, to find out in fact, if what we’re saying has any relevance and to find out what more they need from us.
Obviously there were a lot of rough edges put out through the milestone report, because you all know the circumstances under which it was done, so it was done with the knowledge that there were a lot of rough edges; there were a lot of details to be flushed out. So it was hoped that this would be agreed to, at least on a conceptual level, and the details could then be figured out between now and as this was being considered. As you also know, this was being – the reason this was done in so much haste was to try and have something before the Board as it’s meeting now in Istanbul and so I think it’s going to be very difficult, in fact, for the group to know where it’s going until we see what the Board is having to say about it, or if indeed it has anything to say.
If it turns out the Board isn’t meeting in Istanbul, doesn’t even deal with the JAS report, it’s going to be very, very difficult to figure out what we can do in any time that’s going to run parallel with the existing applicant guidebook, assuming that’s approved on time. So anyway, it’s just – this has been really, really, really frustrating. I’ll leave it at that, but in terms of where this is going from here, I think we really need to wait for some cues to come from the community, that we’re hoping will be listening to what we have to say. If it turns out they’re not listening, then we have to deal with that accordingly.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Evan. Next on the list is Carlton.
Carlton Samuels: Thank you, Olivier. I am going to say this, and I don’t see any other way I could intellectually be honest, without saying this. If financial need is the primary criteria for joint applicant support, it is the wrong thing. I don’t care whether or not a Council, a group of eminent scribes decided that that is the need, it is the wrong thing. It’s a slight of hand.
The reason for giving applicant support is not because of money, it’s because of the application; what they are intended to do. I think it’s wrong headed, and I will vote no, in principle if that is not central. I will not – I will say it again, I will not contribute to that error. It is what it is. That’s the first thing. Secondly, with regard to the financial constraints, it is a moving target, and you see the response from the group and I understand it intuitively. If you are going to put up a number that says this is what it is, then you have to know more about the cost, and you have to know more about what constraints there are.
It is not a global, one global figure; it’s not a one size fits all. It cannot be, because everywhere in the world, in different areas of the world, there will be different constraints. Now, I will go along with someone putting up a bar and saying everyone has to chin up to this bar. But in my own mind, it is absolutely just that; a bar in the middle of a field. That’s it. Thirdly, I do not understand why there continues to be this fixation on what some other Work Group says. We, together, had meetings, we have conversations; I believe the drafting team did an absolutely great job in connecting with what was said. I truly believe that. Everyone knows why we had a problem with the drafting team, because of the withdrawal of Avri.
When Ilanya and Cintra and Andrew came in and took over the team, I believe they did a lot of work to collect what they were previously not in line with. So I am truly very sorry, it is not – no, he doesn’t have all of the details, but it would be inhuman to expect details at the level that would satisfy everybody. As far as I’m concerned, I will go forward with this, because I think it’s important.
I believe it requires Board guidance for us to go deeper into those details. If we do not get Board guidance, it seems to me it would be useless to make all the details, because that’s where I expect the Board to give us guidance, just how far do we plumb for details. But as far as I’m concerned, a charter exists; if we renege on the charter here, it will be a disservice to the community. And I feel very strongly about that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Carlton, and certainly this appears to be a subject that we all feel particularly strongly about. Judging from the time that we’re taking to discuss this, it’s quite obvious. I’ll move to Alan next. Alan, please.
Alan Greenberg: I’ll be very quick, two points; number one, on the issue of financing the primary issue, there was a lot of discussion, and I thought I had successfully made the point that there are multiple parallel criteria. In fact, this report says that, and later on went on to say that finance is primary. Well, that’s a conflict between the two sections, and I’d like to think that the word primary was left in by mistake. I’m not going to comment further on that; I agree with Carlton, however, that it cannot be primary. It has to be one of the parallel constraints.
I have to disagree with what Tijani said; as part of the ExCom, he didn’t want to vote against something. I think for the integrity of us as people on the ALAC as individuals and for you on the ExCom, I think it’s crucial that if someone disagrees, that they say they disagree, and say why, in this case. It’s for a very particular reason, not disagreeing with the overall report. I think from a point of view of integrity, it’s far more important to be viewed as being honest and saying what the issues are, rather than having solidarity, which masks things. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Alan, and that was the reason why I did question the lack of votes on that. Tijani, I gather you will vote now. And next on the list is Carlton again. Oh, is that an old hand?
Carlton Samuels: That’s an old hand. Sorry.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you Carlton. Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, just very, very briefly; Tijani, I heard some of your concerns about going back between the refurbishment of chartering, etc., and then going back and redoing things. And yes, it is very frustrating and time consuming to have that happen. Because it’s very common in Work Groups, there’s a mechanism and sort of very defined roles for everyone and mechanisms for how one deals with disagreements on principles and minority reports and comments to be generated, etc., etc.
For example, if you did have an issue with a small section of a report, in the – now I believe released, so it could be used as operational from now on, Work Group guidelines out of GNSO, I think it’s quite appropriate, particularly when it’s a co-chartered Work Group, that what we might do as a next step, and maybe what we ought to be doing for this agenda item, we as a charter organization could discuss this at our ALAC meeting.
I suppose that if we encourage – no, make that request – that the JAS Work Group adopt and use those guidelines, whichever one of those to the best of your ability set the guidelines, it’ll give I think a nice playing field, and will help us ensure that the JAS Working Group does indeed get on with the next step, regardless of what happens with the Board, and with the GAC, which is important. They’ve also got a couple of things on the charters that haven’t been addressed yet. So that’s where I’m heading. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thanks very much Cheryl. Tijani?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you, I do agree to stick to the charter. If we stick to the charter we will do everything else we have to do. For example, I can see that our mission inside the charter is support revenue, income, and other asset management etc., etc. So I am asking for more than what is inside the charter. Only inside the charter, I want to stick to the charter. I don’t want everytime we change everything; there is work done, we have to respect it, we have to continue on it. We don’t have to change it. That’s my point. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much Tijani. And so I gather from our discussion, which by the way, I think is very good because we are all very transparent and certainly putting the issues on the table. Although we have spent a bit more time on this subject and perhaps gone into discussing the JAS itself, rather than the future steps, I understand that the first step is to listen to any Board feedback. In fact, it’s to encourage the Board to bring us feedback, because that is absolutely vital in the next steps of the JAS Working Group.
From that point onwards, we will then be able to work with the JAS to make it continue forward. I understand that there is currently a plan for a meeting to take place in Singapore; is there any feedback on this yet, or is that just going to be a general session? Any plans on how this will be run? Alan, you have your hand up, but I thought I’d first get an answer for this question. Carlton?
Carlton Samuels: I propose that we have open session where we deal with any – and the draft agenda so far is to look at the milestone report and deal with any issues with that from the Board in that open session. We would use that session, for example, to solicit more feedback on some areas of the report, where the details are fuzzy, or we have considerable community concerns raised. That was the draft plan for Singapore meeting.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And Carlton, would that be only JAS members or would that also include invites to the GAC and to --
Carlton Samuels: It can also be them, it will be an open meeting. That’s what I propose, an open meeting. I want to keep it as open as possible so we can get as much background as we can. The issue for me, and I discussed it with Rafik, is that the details of the proposal, because they are fuzzy and because that’s the pricing thing and some of these other issues, if we could get a wider group to input, then we could strengthen those areas. That’s my hope. And then if we have some Board comments, that would probably give us even better guidance in what direction we might do those things.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Carlton, and just to make sure, Carla is dealing with sorting out the times for that, is she?
Carlton Samuels: yes, we’ve asked Carla to do that, and she did acknowledge the request.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you. Alan?
Alan Greenberg: I’m very dubious that we’re going to get any formal feedback from the Board. The Board is not scheduled to have a formal Board meeting, which is the only time they say formal things. They may have one anyway, at the retreat, I don’t know; but I’d be dubious that we’re going to get formal answers. I think we’re going to have to work hard to get comments from people on the Board that we can talk to, for their informal feelings and their sense, as a Board, to the extent that they’ll share it with us. So I think that’s something to keep in mind.
I think the same thing is largely true with the GAC, although since the GAC actually issued an inter-sessional record of advice to the Board; maybe they’re actually getting their act together, and will be able to do this. But I think from the GAC too, I think we’re going to have to rely more on informal rather than on formal, and I think that’s important, as we go into the meeting, to know a lot of this is going to have to be one on one. At least from my opinion. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: so that, I guess, is an action item for all of us, to liaison with our contacts on the Board and gain some information, of course whilst hoping that the subject itself will be discussed during those two days at the end of this week. I don’t know what’s going on with my – okay. My screen just went wrong. I propose that we close that subject and move on to the next one, if that’s okay with all of you. I guess we’ve got a good idea for the next steps.
Carlton Samuels: Chair, can I just ask you that I have to leave now – it’s a quarter of 10 and I have to get to the campus and get suited up.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Carlton, I thank you and appreciate you very much, and you’re absolutely excused. And it’s been a very good meeting, so thank you, thank you.
Carlton Samuels: Thank you very much. See you all.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Bye.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And so we only have three small items left with any other business afterwards. The three items are just reviews of recent meetings that we’ve had, this one being the review of the 16th of May ALAC/GAC meeting. And we have a number of action items which came out of that, and I propose that we just go through them and continue further on this. The first one was just OCL and At-Large staff to include on the ALAC/GAC Singapore agenda the possibility of having an ALAC liaison to the GAC. That’s certainly something which we’ll be able to discuss in Singapore.
The next one is Heather to look into having meetings between the GAC and the ALAC topic leads on various topics. Now, that’s an AI which I guess we need to follow up with. So I would ask whether it would be possible for staff to email Heather and ask her on progress on this, or perhaps share the action items with Heather.
Seth Greene: Certainly, Olivier.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And the next one is Alice to organize a call between the lead JAS people of the GAC and ALAC. And that I guess is also something which I guess the GAC has to action on, so certainly a list of the action items in an email would be very suitable I think as a follow-up. Of course bearing in mind that by that time, I guess by next week, Heather will have been at the retreat in Istanbul as well as the GAC liaison to the Board – she is entitled to do so. So we will know more at that time and whether the JAS issue has been discussed and to what extent.
Any comments or suggestions emanating from this meeting?
Alan Greenberg: Yeah, I have a question.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Please, Alan, yes.
Alan Greenberg: Out of the action item for Alice, when you say “lead JAS people,” does that mean people who are the formal leaders or the people who have participated heavily?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: That’s an interesting question. I guess what we looked at was JAS people of the GAC and ALAC, and so I would imagine it is the people who have led the charge on the ALAC side, including not only on the ALAC but probably on the At-Large side. So that would include Cintra, for example.
Alan Greenberg: Okay, I was just asking for clarification because it wasn’t clear from the wording and since I wasn’t at the meeting I don’t know what was said or what the intent was.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yeah, the list was basically the topic, well the leaders of the charge of the work and that would obviously be Cintra, Evan and Carlton, and anyone else… And I guess Cheryl as well and anybody else on the ALAC or in At-Large that would be involved.
Alan Greenberg: I would certainly like to include myself on that list.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, I would have thought so, Alan.
Alan Greenberg: That was more the point I was getting at.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I just wondered why you would want to…Anyway, fine. And you notice I didn’t put my name on that but there you go.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: It’s clear.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And Tijani, maybe if he wishes to also be part of it-
Alan Greenberg: Tijani hasn’t been involved in this.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: It looks like all of us are going to be on this.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, you’re digging yourself a hole, Olivier. I would retreat gracefully at this point.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. So the last minute is struck off the record, thank you, in your minds of course. And so the last thing… I guess any other suggestions on this, on the GAC, ALAC/GAC meeting for the time being?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, I’m going to make a suggestion. I’m sure you’ll notice when you read the chat – stop calling it a “GAC/ALAC” meeting. It was a meeting of the Chair of the GAC with the ALAC ExCom and what we need to do is report at the ALAC meeting on that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Ah.
Alan Greenberg: Thank you. I was going to point that out but I forgot, thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Seth, if I may ask you that we modify the agenda items accordingly because that certainly was a mistake, and I guess the next one – the ALAC/Registrars meeting – was also.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No, that is valid. That was an ALAC meeting (crosstalk).
Alan Greenberg: Was that an ALAC meeting or was that selected invitees?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I think it was selected invitees more like. So that will just have to be…
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, I’m less concerned about that being listed as an ALAC/Registrars meeting. I mean yeah, Alan for example is still the ALAC liaison in this area therefore… But the other one definitely is an ExCom/GAC meeting.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I suggest that we….
Alan Greenberg: By the way it was on the formal public agenda, which is the only way I found out about it. It was listed as an ExCom meeting on that agenda though.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: It was, yeah. I suggest that we stop discussing the actual semantics of this otherwise we’ll sound like another constituency in ICANN.
Alan Greenberg: Well, no, no, I’m sorry – this one has to be important. ExCom meetings for instance in general are open to anyone who wants to join, not necessarily to speak but at least to be there. I looked at that agenda and said it was between the Chairs and the Vice-Chairs of the GAC and the ExCom and I did not join that call because I felt that would be inappropriate. So how you label these things when they’re on public agendas is important.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Very important.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So we might need to label it in the future if we can take note of that. So how would-
Alan Greenberg: In the past, private meetings that were by invitation only have not shown up on the public agenda, which probably is wise but I’ll leave that to whoever. So if it’s a meeting on the public agenda but only for selected invitees, be it the ExCom or people by name, the public notice should say that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, that’s noted for the future. So AIs from the ALAC/Registrars meeting is the next discussion, and it was Marilyn to find out the name of the ICANN staff person who is in charge of making the www.icann.org site more friendly.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We gave her that. She didn’t have to find it out – Alan gave the name in the chat there and then.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Completed and done, okay. Oh, and I notice Tijani is about to leave us, so thank you for attending, Tijani.
Gisella Gruber-White: Before Tijani leaves… Sorry, it’s Gisella. Just a quick question on the GAC and ALAC meeting on the Sunday afternoon, to propose a time.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes please?
Gisella Gruber-White: The time that [Julie’s] come back with is 2:00 to 3:00 pm on Sunday afternoon. Is that suitable to everyone? And I’ll then check A) if it’s their meeting room or our meeting room, and B) if it’s in their meeting room that they provide us interpretation.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, perfect.
Gisella Gruber-White: Is that okay? Can I confirm that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I think it’s fine by us. I would imagine that it’s more likely to be in their meeting room than in our meeting room because they usually have more space than we do.
Gisella Gruber-White: Absolutely. I just wanted to make sure if you were okay that I ask if we were going to get interpretation, which I think is important for the ALAC.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Absolutely.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It also sets a very good precedent that GAC would like to leverage off of as well.
Gisella Gruber-White: Yes, I know.
Alan Greenberg: But it may be very difficult physically.
Gisella Gruber-White: Well, yes but it’s just the call that we had last week. So if we’re already pressed with the issue now we may be able to get something done.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Definitely.
Gisella Gruber-White: But if it’s coming from us then if we need it for the ALAC.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Gisella. That certainly would be a good point.
Gisella Gruber-White: I’ve got another point just in regards to scheduling, if everyone’s free on Sunday meeting to meet up for dinner like we did in San Francisco?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Sounds like a plan.
Gisella Gruber-White: Because the Sunday night-
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Wait a second. Olivier, is the ISOC meeting definitely Saturday or is it Saturday-possibly-Sunday?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Now that’s a question actually. I’ll have to pass on that and come back to you because I have a feeling it’s… Well, it’s either one of these two days but I did not check what the latest status was regarding to that.
Alan Greenberg: And I don’t know where the GNSO is with regard to the Board.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, we don’t know yet.
Gisella Gruber-White: (crosstalk) provisional placeholder so that everyone’s okay?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, placeholder sounds good.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Please Gisella, yes please.
Gisellla Gruber-White: Saturday is not feasible.. I know that people get in at unearthly hours, I think possibly everyone won’t even be there by midnight, so I’m not going to go- Poor Tijani I remember in San Francisco was falling asleep. I just thought that that is a night that we could possibly do it. Monday night we’ve got our policy dinner, Tuesday night is music night, Wednesday night [garland] night. ALAC’s usually… Thursday night is usually when ALAC likes getting together. The other option is after the meeting on Friday the 24th of June, after our ExCom meeting we’ll go and freshen up and then meet up for drinks because staff and ExCom will still be there.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Hell, that’s not a bad plan – drinks after an ExCom meeting.
Gisella Gruber-White: But I thought-
Alan Greenberg: It’s only a good plan if I’m included.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh Alan.
Gisella Gruber-White: I’ll just put on the Friday night in any case if we can do, it’s always nice just to catch up and debrief even though we’ve got an ALAC meeting that afternoon. But the Sunday’s more in prep for the week.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Perfect.
Gisella Gruber-White: If everyone’s okay I’m putting it in as a placeholder and we’ll keep an eye out on our (inaudible) for the day.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you. And one thing I was going to ask is whether we could again have a document, one sheet where everyone could send their details of when they’re arriving and when they’re leaving?
Alan Greenberg: There is a-
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Done!
Alan Greenberg: …sheet on the Wiki. People actually have to fill it in though.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: A Singapore one? Really, oh maybe I missed that. Maybe I’ve missed it, sorry.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, Gisella, I’m just with your 2:00 to 3:00, I’m just opening up my ccNSO Council Workshop on hat Sunday just to check that-
Gisella Gruber-White: You’ve got the ccNSO Workshop finishes at 2:00.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, that’s fine. Great.
Gisella Gruber-White: That’s going to guide you to the next one.
Alan Greenberg: Yeah, I don’t know when the GNSO is yet.
Gisella Gruber-White: Is it on the Sunday? No. It hasn’t been finalized but I can, I’ll tell Glen that we’ve got (crosstalk).
Alan Greenberg: As long as it’s not when I’m giving a presentation or something like that, and I can skip out of most everything unless I’m actually talking or participating. And there will be a PEDNR presentation sometime on that weekend.
Gisella Gruber-White: Yes, I see. Yes. We thought of moving all those things around but-
Alan Greenberg: No, I understand, I’m just raising it was one of the things to look at.
Gisella Gruber-White: …that schedule as well, so. With regards to the main schedule we’ve got the IDN PDP Working Group, potentially the GNSO Working session and the Board meeting with ATRT but nothing else. So I’ll confirm that to the GAC.
Alan Greenberg: Are you with us in Singapore, Gisella?
Gisella Gruber-White: Yes.
Alan Greenberg: Good.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yay! Yay!
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I should hope so. I mean Alan, who would be with us? Who would be with us?
Gisella Gruber-White: You’re going to have Seth, Matt and myself so you’re going to have to bear with us. Seth has done half a meeting, Matt hasn’t been involved in ALAC meetings yet so it’s me.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And it only gets better.
Gisella Gruber-White: So we’ll be working on the agendas together and we will definitely be requesting input, and I know that Seth will get back to everyone on that one. But you’ll have to be patient.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: She’ll be fine – it’ll all be wonderful.
Alan Greenberg: If we’re finished with official business I have an unofficial one whenever we get to that point.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. Well before we jump to item #7 we were still discussing item #6, which was the ALAC/Registrars meeting. We’re pretty (inaudible) through the action items on this because I do feel we need to move on that as well. So the first one was of course the material and contents similar to what’s being discussed in the ALAC/Registrar meeting and trying to find out if ICANN is already working on this. That I’m afraid has not been done, just bad (inaudible) basically. I’ll work on this with Seth so that we get in touch with Scott, etc., and find out what’s going on with them and what’s their status.
The next one was set up a Wiki page used to collaborate on content ideas for the educational materials to be developed by At-Large and Registrars, and a collaborative space is ready. What we need to do now I guess is a call for comments, for input to be on there. And the material… Well, I guess the first step for the materials is the question that one wants to ask about, from the registrars regarding domain names and registration of domain names, etc., etc. And I guess the whole, well “everything you ever wanted to ask but were afraid to do so.” Alan?
Alan Greenberg: Yeah, the previous item when you said if you’re going to see if ICANN is already working on it, doesn’t that heavily overlap with the PEDNR recommendation that’s coming out?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes.
Alan Greenberg: And shouldn’t we link those as opposed to trying to do two things in parallel?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Sounds like a good idea, yes. Thank you for pointing us to this Alan. What do you suggest doing?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (crosstalk) PEDNR a number of times since we’ve been discussing this, but anyway.
Alan Greenberg; That recommendation is likely to be locked up in a week or so, and at that point I think that to the extent that’s only looking at exploration issues – although we are referring to domain names, domain lifecycle and things like that – I think we need the registrars and ALAC needs to take a critical look at what the recommendation is and add some other parts to flush it out, and then try to make that a to-do list, on ICANN’s to-do in a global sense.
I would let that one lead the way because that one’s going to be coming out as a recommendation from a PDP which is going to be endorsed by the Board, and ICANN’s going to have no choice but to eventually do that. So I think we’re best going to heed back on that. It’s going to have more force at that point.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And it makes perfect sense.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, excellent. So we’ll keep that. So next week is it possible for you, Alan, to keep us updated on that?
Alan Greenberg: Well, I’ll keep you updated on it. You mean update it at the ALAC meeting?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well at the ALAC, yes I guess, and well, when this comes out… I mean I can check many different discussion lists but you know, PEDNR is one out of many and it’s good that you’d be able to keep track since you’re so closely related to it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Can I make a proposal? What we need to do-
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Please, Cheryl.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: What we need to do as an ExCom on this is as we report on the ALAC/ExCom and Chair of GAC meeting, we need to report on this to the ALAC meeting. So if we alter the Wiki page with the AIs and there’s a bit that says “what still needs to be done on this topic,” and we now replace that text with what Alan has just said about PEDNR, that it needs to be interwoven with and contingent upon and therefore. So wrap a sentence in there and then take the ALAC to this page and let them have a five- or seven-minute conversation on it.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl. Did you get this, Seth?
Seth Greene: Not all of it. Would you just repeat the… We just simply want to make an AI that will link this meeting to the PEDNR recommendation coming out?
Alan Greenberg: I dropped off the line so I don’t know what happened in the last minute or so.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Alan, I was- What you said, Alan, in terms of it needs to be, what we’re working on – the educational material specific to this – needs to be contingent upon the recommendations we expect to come out of PEDNR. So the AI isn’t, you know, linking; the AI is changing that sentence that says “still needs to be done” with a bullet point to “will include expected outcomes from the PEDNR report and specific material and content that will be mandated from that PDP process.”
Seth Greene: Okay, thank you Cheryl.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Did I butcher that, Alan?
Alan Greenberg: No, that’s close enough. I would suggest we go piggyback which allows us to defer doing anything.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah or piggyback’s fine.
Alan Greenberg: For a little while anyway.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well the first time I said it I had a whole lot of other adjectives and adverbs and things in there, but you know.
Alan Greenberg: Yeah, I’m sorry – my line went dead. When I dialed back out I was told I had to wait for the subscriber so it was rather (inaudible).
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, right, well thanks very much. I think we can now move on to the next part which is the any other business.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh, so you have agreed with moving #7 to our next meeting.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: What, discussion of At-Large meetings in Singapore?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: We had already touched on that. Oh, was there more to discuss on this?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No. There’ll be a lot to do; I’m suggesting it’s not done now, but that is the primary topic of our discussion or an early agenda item in our next ExCom.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I think that’s a good idea. I mean we have touched on it but I guess we still have, there still needs to be some movement on that and certainly next week we’ll know more.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: There are three things, there were three action items from our earlier review of action items that we said we would discuss when we got to this part of the agenda. We’re not going to get to this part of the agenda, therefore…
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It’s a bit to capture, we can’t do it now.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well if we have another five minutes then-
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No. It’s 1:00 am, I’ve now managed to wake my husband up and he’s bored reading a book because I’ve been so loud on this call. I really love you all dearly but I’ve had enough of you, therefore as I suggested move #7. We’ve done the time-critical stuff that Gisella needed; move #7 to an early agenda item of the next meeting, and then we need to go back through all of the schedules.
[crosstalk]
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: If there is no objection to this from anyone then we can do that.
Gisella Gruber-White: Gisella here just to say, sorry, I know that I’m working with Glen on the GNSO schedule and I’ll try and have something for their Sunday session so that we can make sure that we’re not overlapping any of our sessions. But we need to fine comb through the agendas, especially that Heidi’s not here.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. And I was just going to ask one question, though, with regards to this. I have been asked whether we wanted to have a meeting with the SSAC.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: What was the outcome of the meeting you held in San Francisco with them? I wasn’t in the room for that; were there action items to follow up on?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: They introduced themselves and it was just more of an introductory thing than anything else.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, if there’s nothing on the agenda to follow up on I suggest no, you know?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, no provisionally and I’ll find out. I’m afraid I haven’t got the AIs of the last meeting with SSAC so I’ll follow up on that and check.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Olivier, did they suggest a reason for the meeting? I mean are they coming out with another SS040something or other or, you know?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: It’s just a general meeting that they’ve just sent and said, you know, “Do you wish to have a meeting with us? Is there any more interest to have meetings with us?” I guess they’re probably asking everyone.
Alan Greenberg: I think the answer is yes, there’s always interest but we don’t have any particular topic at the moment.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Does this have a reply, RSVP date that is before the next ExCom at the end of the month?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: There is no RSVP date. It’s Vanda that emailed me and said “Let me ask if ALAC has any intention to have a meeting with the SSAC in order to advise to organize such a meeting if you’re interested.”
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, when we go through with a fine-tooth comb we’ll know better what we can say.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you. And I think we’re at any other business.
Alan Greenberg: I just had a question for people off the record of has anyone gotten housing information or do you know when it’s going to happen? I’ve got complete silence from Constituency Travel including responding to my requirement to have a date change because of an airline change. So I’m starting to worry and I’m just wondering. The official closing for reservations has already passed, so okay, no one else has had anything. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And I haven’t filled in my arrival details because my change of planes hasn’t been confirmed yet. I guess that I’ll be fine but when I have them confirmed then I’ll confirm it.
Alan Greenberg: Okay, thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. Any other “other business”? Looks like there isn’t and I appreciate we’re now two hours into this call. So I’ll thank absolutely everyone for attending and thank you for a very good meeting, and I therefore declare this meeting finished. And thank you very much, good-bye.
[End of Transcript]
