Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So good morning, good afternoon and good evening everyone. This is the ALAC Executive Committee conference call on Friday, the 20th of [April]. The time is 14:09 UTC. Welcome everybody. Today we have quite a long ExCom call that we have to go through, and first we’ll start with the roll call please. Thank you.
Nathalie Peregrine: Hello everyone. On today’s ALAC ExCom call we have Olivier Crépin-Leblond, Evan Leibovitch, Tijani Ben Jemaa, Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Alan Greenberg, Rinalia Abdul Rahim and Carlton Samuels. We have a guest speaker, Sebastien Bachollet. We have received no apologies for today’s call. From staff we have Heidi Ullrich, Silvia Vivanco, Matt Ashtiani and myself, Nathalie Peregrine. I would like to remind you all to please state your names before speaking for transcription purposes. Thank you very much and over to you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Nathalie. Have we forgotten anyone here? We have not, okay. So we basically start with the first part of our meeting and that’s a warm welcome to our guest speaker Sebastien Bachollet who is an ICANN Board member, seat #15 selected by the At-Large already more than a year ago. And the reason why we have Sebastien among us today is primarily because there has been a lot of noise recently made within ICANN and outside ICANN with regards to conflicts of interest, where Board members have demonstrated that many of them have a conflict and a subcommittee has been created as well that is non-conflicted.
Unfortunately Sebastien is not part of that subcommittee and so at the moment the At-Large Advisory Committee is writing a statement, in fact its second statement on the Board and the conflict of interests that actually are present both on the Board and elsewhere and sometimes structural conflicts. I thought it was a good idea and in fact several of us thought it was a good idea to discuss this directly with Sebastien and provide him with a platform to lengthily discuss what his conflicts are; and really showing that I guess in a way it’s not a very black and white separation: there are shades of conflicts, some of which are directly related to the New gTLD Process and some of which are somehow more remote.
So it would be god to have a good and frank discussion with Sebastien and perhaps starting with Sebastien explaining to us what his current conflict or conflicts are and how it all fits together. And so Sebastien you have the floor.
Sebastien Bachollet: Thank you. I am happy to be with you today, even if it’s not with (inaudible). I would like to speak with you more because I am a little bit uncomfortable in this situation, not because of what I am doing but the decision taken by the Board and then the impression given about what I am doing. And I want to explain to you and just when we decided to have this call I was already traveling. I am at the RIPE NCC meeting; we just finished here two hours ago and I didn’t bring all my documents. And as some of you know I have to change laptops and I do not have everything with me as it was before.
So I will do this by memory and not by documents written in front of me but that will be okay I guess. First of all I wanted to tell you that the Chair of the Audit Committee which is the Subcommittee of the Board Governance Committee. The Board Governance Committee is chaired by Bruce Tonkin and the Audit Committee was a subgroup of the BGC with non-conflicting Board members who are in charge of looking at this question of conflicts of interest and then to bring that to the full Board. An the Chair of this Subcommittee is Cherine Chalaby and he’s willing, ready, happy to have a talk with you, with me or without me but he is ready to talk with you about all these questions if you wish so.
As a Board member we are to fulfill a lot of different documents; the last one was about gTLDs, and then there are two reasons why I am conflicting. The first one is I was hired in September to take care of a European project on Open Data and it happens that within this small company there is one and a half people who are working part time on helping one French region to set up their project and that is a small team. When I go to the office, and it happens twice a month, no more, I can see [papers beside papers], and I say that it’s an old apartment used for an office. Is there something? Yes, everybody can see it so I guess it’s something. Is it to be fixed? It will be fixed in the near future.
The second: it’s because of my participation on the IFFOR Board. IFFOR to everybody is the policy council, the policy body making policy for the .xxx run by ICM as a registry, and the link before IFFOR and ICM is that IFFOR is fully subsidized by ICM following an agreement. When IFFOR was set up it was clearly written that a portion of the fees for each domain would go to IFFOR’s budget and IFFOR makes its own job. It’s happened that within the Board members we are three ones coming from ICM. It used to be the Chair at the beginning and we pushed to change, not to have the Chair of ICM being a Board member of IFFOR and Chair of the IFFOR; and now I guess it’s illegal from ICM Board member of IFFOR, and the Chair is the third guy, a Canadian guy, [Klein Vetsiz].
When we were considering the question of conflicts of interest a possibility of difficulty already is there but it seemed that it’s not enough. In the corridor during the last ICANN meeting there were the Chair of ICM saying that they will apply for a new gTLD. I can tell you that I was not aware at all and now that it’s public I know the three gTLDs they are applying for. And that’s the reason why the Board considers that I have potential or perceived conflict of interest, that ICM applying for a new gTLD and as a Board Member of IFFOR I could be in the loop. I can tell you that I am not but it’s what it is, and now we are in this situation.
And to remedy that, the only proposal by the Committee was to ask me to withdraw from the Board of IFFOR, and I decided that it was not a good idea for different reasons. But one of them is that I think I was asked to be a part of this Board to be a voice of the internet end user and I like that; I think it’s important to have that done. And I don’t see why, because of perceived possible conflicts of interest I would have not done that. It’s where we are, and then the Board decided to have a Subcommittee to take care of all the new gTLDs knowing that if they need the help or the inputs of any of the other Board members they are able to do that. It didn’t happen since the creation of this committee because we are not so many things to be done where our input was important but I get no pushback to still participate in the [other] working groups or still participate and work; and I hope that will be the case till the end of the New gTLD Project.
I guess I put all these things on the table, oh, maybe one thing – it’s now also, we are now as an ICANN Board member compensated and I am now also compensated for my participation through the IFFOR Board, and that’s useful to put that on the table here. I might have missed some sort of idea but I am ready to answer questions and to add to what I have said now. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Sebastien! And thanks for this extensive explanation of your various positions. As you mentioned here you’re ready to answer questions so I wonder if any of my colleagues have any questions for you on any parts of the conflicts and perhaps what it means. You can hear me, can’t you?
[many “Yes’s”]
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, everyone can hear me so I don’t see anybody putting their hands up – that’s rather interesting. I have a couple of questions, Sebastien. The first one, with regards to the small company you mentioned earlier, can we mention what that company is?
Sebastien Bachollet: No problem – it’s [Item International], it’s a company who is also doing the work where it was in charge of doing the review of the ccNSO and who will do the review of the ISO, one for ICANN, the other one for the NRO. And they are helping one French region on the new gTLD. And yeah.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Are you part of the team to work on the new gTLD?
Sebastien Bachollet: No, no, I am not at all. It’s just because as I say, I can have some… The office is small. When I go to the office I take any place where there’s space, and I say that there is no specific place where there is all about the new gTLD put somewhere under lock. And it was too much for my colleagues. And I will try to fix that with the boss of [Item] but I am not at all part of this team.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so that was my first question. The other question was with regards to the small subgroup of the Board Governance Committee that Cherine Chalaby is chairing, what does, I mean what is this group going to do with regards to the New gTLD Process that you’re not going to be able to take part in? What does this effectively, your conflicts, what do they prevent you from doing from now on as part of your functions on the Board?
Sebastien Bachollet: On new gTLDs everything. They are in charge of doing the policy for the new gTLDs. That’s clear. It’s that they will act as the Board.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so they will basically take the decisions on behalf of the Board. So let me just give you an example: you know that of course the ALAC has been working on a process to file objections along specific grounds. With those being filed I guess with the Board, does this mean that effectively there is no member of the ALAC, sorry, no Board member that was selected by the ALAC that will be able to actually view or deal with any of these objections?
Sebastien Bachollet: Yes.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Do you have to put those to any other documents or is it just a decision that will be taken by them? In other words, are you completely removed from anything to do with the New gTLD Process or are you just prevented from voting?
Sebastien Bachollet: The Board is taking what I call a very conservative, and I think the Board from my point of view the Board goes too far. But well, they decided that all the conflicting Board members are not getting any information on any of these things before they become public. But if it’s a position that you are taking and it’s public, like if it’s a position that you discuss to me that’s different – that’s something disclosed by the Board. But as a Board member I have no access to any information – it goes just to the Board members who are members of this Subcommittee. They are acting as the Board and they are all the authority, and I can tell you that I pushed to say that as a Board member with only this perceived type of conflict of interest that it’s going too far but it’s the way the Board has decided to go.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. I see Evan…
Sebastien Bachollet: And then there’s another thing I wanted to say also. I discussed with my colleague just to be sure, it was not my intention [to put that on the table] and you’d have to be careful also with that. And you take three times to find the right sentence. I am not ALAC, At-Large, one Board member. I was selected by the At-Large and as soon as I am selected I am one Board member like the other ones and I have no specific link to ALAC except my heart and except that I am happy to discuss with you all that subject because I have no problem with what I do. And I take steps, and before joining IFFOR I had a lot of discussions and it was not a conflict of interest except for the awarding of the .XXX. And as you know I abstained from this vote. But the policy was changed on the 8th of December, and my reading of the document was different than the reading of the rest of the Board, and we are where we are today.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. Why don’t we have Evan in the queue – Evan, you have the floor.
Evan Leibovitch: Hi there.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I don’t know if you can hear me? It’s too faint, isn’t it?
Evan Leibovitch: I’m shouting over the ocean so I can talk louder.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, I said Evan, you have the floor.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. Hi Sebastien, thanks for being here and for coming into this. Can you expand a little bit on what you mean by you think the Board is going too far on conflict of interest issues? If anything the mood I’m seeing within ALAC is saying that things aren’t strict enough, things aren’t tough enough; and in fact, statements and comments are being made that are suggesting perhaps At-Large should be taking a tougher position on this. Could you expand a little bit at least to help me understand the issues on why you think right now in your own opinion that the Board is going too far with this?
Heidi Ullrich: Evan, this is Heidi; very sorry but it looks like we’ve lost Sebastien. We’re just working to get him back so you probably will need to repeat your question. Sorry about that, we’ve just heard about that.
Evan Leibovitch: Not to worry, and Cheryl has stepped away again.
Carlton Samuels: Olivier, this is Carlton. Did you find out from Sebastien the-
Sebastien Bachollet: Sorry, I am back and I didn’t hear anything that you said after my last speech. It’s Sebastien for the record.
Evan Leibovitch: Sebastien, this is Evan. Can you hear me now okay?
Sebastien Bachollet: Yes, now it’s okay. Thank you.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay, I just want to ask you to expand a little bit on what you meant when you said that you thought the Board was going too far on conflict of interest issues. At least much of the activity I’ve seen within ALAC and At-Large has been in fact to strengthen things and make them tougher, so I’m interested to know to help me make my own decisions and my own positions on this why in your opinion things have gone too far.
Sebastien Bachollet: I think we, I would say there are people in the industry, I can understand that there’s a real and eminent conflict of interests – they are putting in applications. And I am not putting in any application and I am not working for any registrar or registry. It happened that in one case within my company there are people who are doing things on the domain name, and I must have known that when I joined them but I was looking for a specific job and activities. Then the remedies suggested will be done. This subject is, from my point of view, not so useful.
The second one is I am participating on the Board of a policy advising organization and not of a registry, and I think it’s going too far. IFFOR will not be used, as much as my knowledge and today I don’t have any other information other than ICM put in three applications. I don’t think that they will use IFFOR for anything and I didn’t get any direct information on the application. And as I told you I got this information because it became publicly explained by the CEO and now is public in different interviews or publications.
And I think it’s going too far. Now the Board decides that I have conflicts of interests and a perceived conflict of interest, and the remedies they suggested to me are not acceptable for me and I didn’t follow them. And I think we have to be careful. We are a multi-stakeholder organization and we need to be I would say calm and not do the act because something… For example, nothing happened after the decision taken by the [Vice-Chair] of the Board to work in specific organizations, and I regret that nothing was done at that moment; but it’s not because nothing was done at that moment that now we need to do something stronger than needed.
And my other point, and that’s the question asked by Olivier – it’s important. It’s that the previous Board had input from everybody at the end when the vote is done it is done by the non-conflicting Board members. I would have thought that would still have been a good way to go, but as they decided they just want to be the non-conflicting getting the information, talking about it, taking a decision and voting on the decision. And it’s why I think it’s going too far.
I will take just one example. I have to be careful because all of it is recorded and I will have Legal coming on my shoulder, but there are some discussions about what is happening on the system, on the TAS. If you don’t have I would say some technical knowledge it’s… It’s already difficult to understand for people with some technical background but with no technical background I think it’s almost impossible, or it was impossible to understand. Now other things will be explained and it will be easier to understand, but even the technical people don’t know what exactly is happening. And I have just the (inaudible) information once again: I think for this part to have a better understanding and a better weight on what staff is doing, is it will be better to have the technical people within the room.
And today, I will not say “all” because I didn’t check the knowledge of everybody but a large part of the technical people with knowledge on that were completely out of the room and I think it’s bad for the overall organization. And you see where-
Carlton Samuels: I think the people who are conflicted now are the ones with the technical knowledge and could make more sense of this.
Sebastien Bachollet: Yes, thank you for saying what I wanted to say in a short time.
Carlton Samuels: I suspected as much. I looked at the list; to be very honest I looked at the list and I’ve been following the status reports, and I look at the people who are conflicted and who are redlined and that was the thing that jumped out at me. As a matter of fact, well, I won’t say anything more.
Sebastien Bachollet: And it’s why I think that we need to try to draw a line, but I think we collectively get too far. But I understand you at the same time that it’s a tough subject and it’s important to be careful, but I don’t think it’s good to jeopardize the multi-stakeholder and the input from different people. Then at the end, yes, the vote must be done by the non-conflicting but I don’t think why the inputs of some of us, if not all of us conflicting could be… It was useful six months ago; it is not anymore useful today.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Sebastien. In fact, it’s interesting, just listening to the discussion there and the point that’s been raised with what’s happening with the TAS and the people who are conflicted and so on. I mean it looks as though the Board has done something to resolve the conflict of interest but it might have used a machine gun to swat a fly as one uses the expression. Then again, others think that the Board has not done enough.
One of the things that the ALAC is about to release, a second statement with regards to the conflicts of interest; and in there are recommendations in creating a cross-community commission that would be looking at these things. Because clearly it is a very complex subject and it looks as though at the moment there have been actions taken under a lot of pressure whilst at the same time the community doesn’t seem to have been very much involved in deciding about what actions to take. I mean this Board, this Subcommittee is a committee that the Board has created in itself; that the Board fixed within the Board, but I didn’t hear that it had any bottom-up consensus policy that came to create this.
Sebastien Bachollet: No, and to be… Once again, maybe I am going too far but you have to know that there is one rule on the Board, that if we vote by any electronic means, a resolution to be (inaudible) anonymously and with all the [others] voting. so that if somebody abstains it can go through; if somebody is not participating it can go through. Then it’s also to solve this type of problem within the Bylaws that this action was taken, and I request a few things to be changed in the Bylaws. For example, when we voted for the .XXX I was not abstaining, I would say not in an election – not to say in French “an election” but in other elections I will not participate. It’s not the same thing as abstaining. And in fact when we abstain, in the process today we vote “No” because if you don’t-
Carlton Samuels: See, this is one of the things I wanted to get to, because that was my understanding of it – abstention means “No” structurally. And I’m wondering how the Board’s response is helping the process.
Sebastien Bachollet: I would like you to, if you want, I think we will have a better discussion, a more useful discussion for the general process to invite Cherine. Eventually you can invite Bruce as the Chair of the Board Governance Committee; you can invite the Chair of the Board if you want to, and I am almost sure that Legal will be participating at this type of meeting. But I think it will be a useful discussion to see what are the lines and what could be, how we can fix things with not going too far in one direction or the other.
Carlton Samuels: Yes.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, I don’t want to take the whole call on this. Thank you, Carlton, for your intervention there.
Sebastien Bachollet: Just one thing-
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I have Alan in the queue at the moment; he’s been very patient. Alan wanted to speak, so Alan, you have the floor.
Alan Greenberg: Yes, thank you. I guess I want to disagree with Sebastien. Given what happened with the former Chair, and despite we say that the Board didn’t do anything but it’s not clear what one can do to a private individual who didn’t violate any rules other than change the rules for the future. I don’t think, given the level of criticism and where the criticism is coming from I don’t think the Board could do anything but take an extreme position and then maybe you know, as time passes loosen the restrictions a little bit.
The issue of an abstention being a negative vote – well, that’s what the Bylaws say right now. And yes that can be changed but it can’t be changed overnight, and it certainly it shouldn’t be changed without significant debate. So I don’t see that the Board really had any option but to do something to try to make sure that it was not subject to criticism from a conflict point of view; and then if indeed it has gone overboard, to go back after the fact and try to fix that in the future. We were in a rather bad position and still aren’t in a great position, and if you take a look at the projected ALAC statements that has been an At-Large feeling and it’s certainly not unique to us.
So I don’t see how anything else could have been done that wasn’t at least as extreme as this. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Alan. And I think one of the problems is the difference between an actual conflict and the perception of a conflict, and unfortunately the recent history of the Board has shown that the perception of conflict actually ended up in an actual, very serious conflict that made the perception of ICANN itself at rock bottom, basically. There are serious accusations on ICANN about its practices and its works so far, some of which come from our own ranks, very close ranks. Carlton, you have the floor.
Carlton Samuels: Thank you, Olivier. I just wanted to make three things. My concern is generally that we do have this situation that doesn’t look good for us in terms of the conflict of interest, and there are three concerns for me. I really and truly, I have been looking back and reading this thing a little bit more, and the thing that jumped out at me was when I read the information about the vote – I think I saw it in a blog somewhere about two weeks ago. And I never got to see the contents of it until about two nights ago.
One is the voting relationships on the Board and what does abstention mean – that is to me, if that is not a part of the whole construct to deal with it then it really is going to be a serious matter. The other thing is, how do you create a situation where you have a multi-stakeholder organization and where you have to embrace that one set of stakeholders have interests. And what then is the role that they would play in participating in a multi-stakeholder organization, and what should be the approach to ensuring that they are not left out, they have a voice.
I really think that this issue is one of the two issues I think are most important in defining a taskforce. One thing I did want to say about the taskforce, but to me it might be useful for us to ask those specific questions. And I am just saying it because I now have a feeling that we should give some kind of guidance further to suggesting the taskforce. We should give some kind of guidance that would be the questions we’d wish to see asked and answered by the taskforce. That’s just me thinking aloud, but to me those are the two most important matters that have come up as I’ve delved deeper into this issue. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Carlton. Sebastien, do you have any questions? I realize you have not seen a copy of this yet; this is something which is going to be put on the Wiki today for At-Large inputs. And it’s something which, from the discussions that many of us have had so far by email and following up on the first statement that was drafted a few weeks ago, it appears at least to be a natural progression for the majority of our community, in fact if not all of our community. And we will find out in the next couple of days.
Anyway, time is ticking, Sebastien – do you have any few more words you want to say and then we’ll have to move on in our agenda?
Sebastien Bachollet: Yeah, I understand and thank you very much for having me today. And sorry, I would say sorry to create some trouble, it was not at all my intention. But I want to raise one issue which is for me very, very important, and that I am struggling with since I am elected – the fact that ALAC, again the possibility to select somebody as a full Board member was a good step ahead, but at the same time the fact that ALAC lost its liaison is sometimes quite painful. And I try to do as much as I can in that direction but I obviously can’t do.
And one of the reasons it’s difficult, and I would say it’s more and more difficult is if I talk as ex-ALAC or ex-ALAC by At-Large I have some weapon already again on the table and that’s difficult. And I try to balance where I am pushing for some idea, I [feel] agree and we are working on. And it’s a subject we need to put on the table, how the relationships between the ALAC and the Board are built because it’s one part of the equation. I’ll say I hope that the things will go well. I’m happy to be part of this community and I will try to do my best to help the things going in the right direction, and thank you for having me today.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, Sebastien, thank you very much for joining us and for having spent the time to explain your conflicts on a subject which is very tricky for everyone. Anyway, let’s move on then now to our next part in our agenda, and looking at it it’s Part #3 and it’s the review of the action items from the Executive Committee meeting of the 30th of March, 2012; and also the ALAC meeting of the 17th of April which was just a couple days ago.
We’ll pass over the closed action items and the long-term goals I guess; those ones, some of which by the way have to be updated since now we are past Costa Rica which is a tough one to look at. What I was going to suggest because of time was the long-term goals, Matt and I would work on until our next call and to try and see if we can definitely really put some of these not even to the backburner but to history, since some of these are ongoing but are for the most of them complete.
In-progress long-term goals, no update required and update required: perhaps we should go through the in-progress long-term goals with an update required. First, the RALOs, the ALAC and the ExCom to develop specific long-term strategic plan for outreach with aim of getting funded and with the metrics, etc., etc. Now, we have had a meeting in Costa Rica and there’s been much movement since that time for the metrics to be part of the Rules of Procedure Working Group, for the overall… Well, there is an Outreach Working Group isn’t there that’s been created as well? I wonder if we can put this all to the side. The floor is open for comments on this.
I see Tijani is agreeing with this and Cheryl is also saying “Yes,” and Evan. Alright, so this we know is in progress and has for the most part been done, and let’s put this whole Point #1 on the side to say “completed.” We just have Point F which is “ExCom decided its long-term activity perhaps not done in time for 2012-2015 strategic plan. Outreach issue perhaps needs to be sent to RALOs and ALSes.” All of that really is done. And now we just leave it to the working groups to move forward on this.
Okay, the two Board consultations: the ALAC to refine its goals regarding its advising of the Board for a possible inclusion in 2012-2015 strategic plan or Board paper, and the focus on how the Board accepts and responds to advice from the ALAC. The whole Board consultations part, and further down as well with the ExCom to develop a template for qualitative statements which might include executive summaries and the At-Large Improvements – all of that is actually in progress. Certainly 2A and 2B are in progress.
2C, Cheryl, how would you like to work on this one – the At-Large Improvements? Is this one also left in progress or are we just making this now as being done?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The answer to your question would be I would not classify it as “done” but rather that it is being done.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So in progress really is the word for “it is being done,” right?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Right, because “done” indicates completion and it’s not completed.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so that’s in progress.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: But Olivier, while I have the lack of muting, haven’t we had these conversations ad nauseum before?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I am thinking we do.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I just feel like it’s Groundhog Day, maybe it’s just me, it’s only 1:00 AM, what would I know?
Male: No, I am thinking that we have.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Cheryl, the reason for this is because it says “In-progress long-term goals update required,” so at each one of our calls we will need to ping this and update it. That’s why it’s Groundhog Day. And yes, we could say in advance “That’s why this is all still in progress, we’re not going to read through it.” The concern I have is that something falls through the net, and I think that this feels like Groundhog Day because I’ve said it also in the past. Something comes through the net and then we drop the ball on it, so it’s always a good thing to have a quick look.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Olivier, if I may, there are other ways of tracking and update does not necessarily mean at each of your Executive Committee meetings. You have a new, I believe potentially effective reporting mechanism even now with your work groups at your monthly ALAC meetings and you can certainly have annotations in your list of long-term activities which indicate that they will be reviewed in the month prior to each of the ICANN face-to-face meetings or whatever other period you choose.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I don’t quite see how the working groups work with the in-progress long-term goals. Yes, some of them do but not all of them.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes. Saying that they’ve got to be pinged each meeting, that’s your call but they could be pinged every six meetings. They could be pinged every third meeting. They could be pinged depending on when you want them to be pinged.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, so far we’ve pinged them at every meeting so if the consensus is that we should ping them less then maybe we can ping them once a month and then maybe we’ll ping them less than that afterwards. But I just don’t want to have us let these things through and then we have these things that a year passes and there’s no movement on these, that’s all. Alan?
Alan Greenberg: Yes, my recollection is that we created in-progress long-term goals so that we wouldn’t waste time at every meeting going over the things where the answer is the same. So I’m not quite sure when they got divided into “update required” ones that require every meeting. However, there’s a huge continuum between ignoring it forever and talking about it at every meeting. It could well get reviewed by someone once a week, once a month, once every two months, once every third of a year, and as Cheryl said, annotated; and if you or the ExCom or staff or whoever is delegated to do this feels it needs discussion put it on the discussion list. But the time of the participants on this call is too valuable and the call is too short to do things which are not productive. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so let’s jump then quickly to the open action items, which I gather these are all in progress at the moment. After the New Year staff to work with Cheryl Langdon-Orr in preparation of the Rules of Procedure Working Group and Metrics Working Group. There is to be a call for membership. Do we close this?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Excellent. #2: Rules of Procedure Working Group members to create a glossary of commonly used nomenclature.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, close it. We’ve already passed it on to them.
Alan Greenberg: It’s micromanaging the subgroups; we need to close it anyway.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Three At-Large staff to move forward with the SOI and COI page. That’s in progress. There’s still work, by the way in this, because we will have an automated system at some point that everyone submits SOIs and COIs pretty much in the same way as the GNSO Council does. In fact, several of us have experienced this with the GNSO Council. There have been discussions as to whether we should have a common database between the GNSO Council and ourselves. I would go against it due to the fact that we do require different information than the GNSO requires, and harmonizing the information to be shared among all of the SOs and ACs – because that is what will end up being done if we decide to have a common database – might take months if not years. So let’s start with our own.
Alan Greenberg: It’s Alan speaking. On this item where are we? Does in progress mean it should be up in a week or up in three months or what?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Heidi, do you have an update on this?
Heidi Ullrich: Matt, do you have an update on the currently planned one? And then the issue of the automated one is on today’s agenda.
Carlton Samuels: What they have done is to send out a request for a (inaudible). They have added one question to the SOI page and they’ve asked us to indicate our answer to that one question, so that’s in progress, not done.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: No, but Carlton, you’re talking about the GNSO one. We’re talking about the ALAC one. The ALAC one is totally separate.
Carlton Samuels: But most of us have actually, and Olivier, my SOI for example on the ALAC is a replica of the GNSO one. My understanding was that this additional question was more for our benefit than not. So when I updated it I expected that my SOI on the ALAC side would have been updated as well.
Alan Greenberg: But my question is when are we going to see pages live for ALAC and At-Large SOIs go up?
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, so Matt, can you answer to the current work in progress where you’ve been collecting them?
Matt Ashtiani: The current page is actually already up. I still need to work with Web Admin in order to make it more streamlined with the Board’s page but that’s the current state of it.
Alan Greenberg: When you say “up” is it “up and announced” or is it just up privately?
Matt Ashtiani: No, it’s up. It’s on the Community Wiki. I’ll find the link right now and I’ll put it into the chat.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That’d be good, thanks Matt.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yeah, so Heidi?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, and then the automated one which will be similar to the GNSO template, that’s going to be discussed on today’s ExCom call.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so we can move on then to the next thing: Heidi to contact Sala to discuss the issue of capacity building issues on the February ALAC meeting. Fantastic, that really is done, completed, except if it’s February 2013, but… Gisella to prepare a document showing ALAC members’ current memberships in working groups by the next ALAC meeting – it’s always by the next ALAC meeting. I don’t think Gisella’s managed to do that yet.
Heidi Ullrich: Not yet, however the Metrics Working Group meeting on Monday we will be showing what she has [prepared for that].
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Excellent, thank you. #6: Silvia Vivanco and Gisella Gruber to ensure that the transcript of this call – that really is a long time ago – is to be saved for the Rules of Procedure Working Group so they can review it once they begin their work. Cheryl, was that done? Did you have that in your…
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I haven’t actually seen it as text linked to the relevant pages, so if Matt can confirm that that has happened well then fine; but if not then definitely I’ve personally not seen it.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, Cheryl, thank you – we’ll look into that today.
Matt Ashtiani: Yeah, I’ll check right now.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you. So then #7: Evan to liaise with the NCSG with regards to the current agenda. That was for the Costa Rica agenda; that was done as well.
Then in the newly-assigned action items, staff to ask the ICANN Academy Working Group to discuss the capacity building event at the next meeting and ask Sala that she present on the call. Interestingly that’s the same as the previous one; that’s done as well. And staff to follow up with Compliance regarding the complaint form, and that I believe was done and we had our meeting with Compliance.
Heidi Ullrich: Correct.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Heidi. So then the next thing is the ALAC 17th of April 2012 action items, and guess what we have a case of Groundhog Day there. It’s an exact copy of the one earlier. Do you wish to go through this one as well?
[laughter]
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Oh please no.
Alan Greenberg: Yes, yes, let’s do it in detail.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, I’d like to, please! [laughter]
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Alright, let’s move on to the policy advice development calendar, and I think we can chip through it quite quickly because most of what’s going on is in hand at the moment. The recently-adopted ALAC statements we all know because many of us or most of us if not all of us have actually been involved with them. The statements are currently being reviewed, are all in process with votes, etc. I hope that you’ve all voted for all of them, and if you haven’t please check because I have noticed on some of the previous ones a couple of us have missed the vote. And it is hard to find out – there’s sometimes some votes that come through the flood of emails and you just miss it.
The open policy comments are the .post Agreement Amendment, and there was a choice to make to have no statement on this. Does anyone have any comments on the statement? I mean obviously we discussed this policy advice development calendar a couple of days ago at length during the ALAC call – any comments or suggestions on this? I see Carlton and Alan, so Carlton, please.
Carlton Samuels: Yes, Chair. I wanted to draw your attention – this is Carlton for the record – to the IDN Variants Issues Project. I don’t know if the macro unit has seen the note from Hong about her [consternation] about the Variants Project and the delays and their ability to disqualify early opportunities for some variants to get on the list. It sounds to me, coming from Hong it’s almost a very strident statement and I wanted-
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Hand up.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay.
Carlton Samuels: And I just wanted to make sure that it would be useful for our statement to at least reflect some of the concern that she has. I am not an expert in this so I wish to be guided that this is the case.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Carlton. I know that Rinalia has been quite involved with this. Rinalia, do you wish to comment or should I go through the list of people with their hands up for the time being? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.
Rinalia Abdul Rahim: Can you hear me now?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, well at least I can.
Alan Greenberg: Not well.
Rinalia Abdul Rahim: Okay. I [voted] on the comment, and I think that the statement actually reflects her concerns and Edmon actually agrees with that. This is a very, very careful (inaudible) because on the one hand we don’t want to over-emphasize the [Chinese] community’s concerns because we need to also balance that with the concerns of other communities around the world. And I feel quite confident that that statement actually (inaudible) position and that could be my bias, but that actually [it is the feeling] of this group.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you Rinalia. We have Alan, then we have Cheryl, and then Tijani. Alan?
Alan Greenberg: Thank you. I wanted to make a comment on something you said earlier, not on this particular subject, but I’ll make it and then you can go back to the subject that the others are on. You said sometimes it becomes difficult to catch a vote when they come through in so much email… There used to be a place you could go and say “Show me all the open votes.” I don’t know, since I’m not voting anymore I don’t know whether that still is alive or still works but that was a very useful thing because then one could check periodically every other day or so and just make sure there weren’t any votes due [that you’d] miss the call for.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Indeed, Alan, that’s true.
Alan Greenberg: Maybe it’s still alive; I don’t know.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Alan. Yeah, as a response Alan, it actually is there. It doesn’t work well. It’s either a bug or Matt has had problems using it. We are currently looking at having this working. I totally agree; it’s really interesting to be able to look at those in one go and-
Alan Greenberg: I can [say] it’s the same reason that the list of past closed votes doesn’t work anymore either, maybe not.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: My turn?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, Cheryl next.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, Cheryl Langdon-Orr for the transcript record. And I suppose it’s very important that I say “for the transcript record” now because what I’m going to say could be actually challenging to be transcribed – not in the content but in the effect of it.
First of all, Rinalia, I couldn’t agree with you more. I think the statement on Variants has been very carefully and well crafted. As you know I am in particular concerned about the over-emphasis of only the “C” of the CJK scripts being of interest and also that’s purely from an Asia-Pacific point of view; and also a dominance of one or two out of the brush scripts being seen as in some way of greater importance to have the challenges of variants met and properly dealt with over the other ones, because of course, we don’t have a monopoly on those variant issues scripts – we just have the majority of them in the Asia-Pacific area.
That said, Carlton, let me put your heart at ease. There are many times in our parts of the world where we have to say what we have to say because we have to say it, not because it hasn’t been said. Thank you.
[laughter]
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl, and note that the laugh comes from Carlton.
Carlton Samuels: I couldn’t have said it better to be sure – Carlton for the record.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, and just for the record as well, looking at the discussion notes I am concerned with the over-emphasis of the Chinese, Japanese and Korean scripts is actually to be attributed to CLO rather than CL.
[laughter]
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you. So next, Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you. I don’t know how the transcript will describe the laugh of Carlton and Cheryl, but I hope they will [manage somehow]. Coming back to the statements I think that (inaudible) has said that the statements are just more or less the concern of Hong. Another thing that we can notice: the VIP Group has already evolved and they are not now blocking the variants, they are ready now but there is something to be done before they go forward. But they are not obliged to wait for the others anymore. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Tijani. Okay, so next we have Evan.
Evan Leibovitch: Hi there, this is Evan. Just a quick statement reiterating something I’ve said on the chat regarding the comment that there was an over-emphasis on the “C” rather to the detriment of the “J” and the “K.” There was, if I remember reading that statement an explicit comment within the statement saying that the variant issues were not quite as pressing with the Japanese and Korean scripts as they were with Chinese. So-
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: From a population and user perspective.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay, I thought that it was from a linguistic perspective, that there simply weren’t as many problems with the Korean script in terms of variants as there were with the Chinese.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: There’s even problems between them.
Carlton Samuels: That is what I wanted to get out, because my understanding of this issue is that there’s a technical issue in terms of the variation in the scripts, but by language group – and that’s about implementation, not so much because of the numbers of persons that-
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It’s actually about the code points, and what I’m trying to make sure is that we keep thinking about the code points and not about number of populous who need the variant issues.
Carlton Samuels: That is why I asked the question and asked for clarification, because that is my understanding of it. And I wanted to be sure as I [readied my response] which seems very dire under the circumstances, that we were not missing something or I was not missing something personally. Because as I said I’m no expert but I thought it was about the code points as opposed to the number served; and if we look at it that way then perhaps it would be useful for us to point out that there is no intent to discriminate or to leave out any one concern. It is important for the ALAC statement to ensure that that is passed along.
Evan Leibovitch: Right, and I’m just referring back to the doc – sorry, this is Evan. I’m just referring back to the document where it explicitly made mention that the statement itself was referring more to the “C” than the “J” and the “K” out of technical issues, not population issues – that there were script issues with variants in Chinese that did not necessarily occur in Japanese and Korean. If that is incorrect we need to know and the statement may need to be changed, but it’s my understanding that that’s the way the statement reads right now – that on technical issues, purely technical issues there are variant concerns with Chinese scripts that do not exist with Japanese and Korean. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: With all of the scripts there’s unique issues, yes. (Inaudible) in all of the scripts.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, right. Thank you, everyone, for all your comments on this. It’s obvious that this is a subject that is both complex but also that brings a lot of input. And knowing that we as in the ALAC was rather late in filing the comment and the amount of work that went into this – a webinar and a call and a face-to-face meeting taking place in Costa Rica – I can only do one thing: absolutely say “Bravo” to Rinalia for having been able to make sense out of this whole darn thing. So well done, really for putting this – it’s a tough one. This one was a real tough one but you did an excellent job so well done, and thanks for taking the time on this because it’s something that is really, really important and it was very important that the ALAC had a say in this, definitely with regards to our geographic diversity and the number of people we have in that region. It’s really important.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Hand up.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Your hand up? Oh, well Alan had his hand up and then Cheryl.
Alan Greenberg: Sorry, that’s from before; sorry.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so Cheryl.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Just to follow through very, very briefly – Cheryl for the transcript record – Rinalia’s role has been more than important in this but I think it’s extremely useful from an ALAC perspective to see what you have now is a small but nevertheless dedicated team working with your IDN Liaison, and that is very important because the expertise that usually sits with our IDN Liaison, not always but usually sits with our IDN Liaison occasionally brings them into conflict and this is one of those times where if it was purely penned by our existing IDN Liaison our statement may have been open to criticism. The fact that it was such an open, transparent, and well drafted – thank you, Rinalia – document I think bodes well for the way the multi-stakeholder models can in fact work on even complex and technical issues. So bravo indeed, thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl. And so I ask for one last time if we have any other comments on any of the other policy advice documents and statements that are currently being drafted.
Well, okay. So let’s close this part of the agenda and move on to the next part, which is the review of the 17th of April ALAC meeting a couple of days ago.
Evan Leibovitch: Sorry, Olivier, this is Evan – I missed something there. There is an issue on the agenda that mentions the advice letter on the Consumer Trust thing, so is that vote over or…
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: The vote is still open.
Evan Leibovitch: Sorry, never mind.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yeah, it’s still going on. Did you wish to add anything to it or discuss anything?
Evan Leibovitch: Nope, quite alright.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: The note in there I think on this subject makes it pretty clear that what we’re asking for is the Board to think very clearly about how they call things – “internet users,” “consumer.” But having looked at the background to this it looks as though it was actually the Department of Commerce that asked for the consumer interests to be looked at and not the internet users’ interest to be looked at. So it goes all the way back to this, and I think that our statement will have to permeate back from the Working Group to the Board, from the Board to the NTIA; and the probability of that happening within the next ten years is another question which I’m not going to speculate on.
So next let’s have a look back to our agenda: a review of the 17th of April ALAC meeting. We have here a full set of, well the policy advice development calendar… By the way, just one last thing regarding policy advice development: this I believe is the month with a record number of statements. I’m not sure whether it’s six, seven or eight of them but it’s pretty crazy. Of course it’s the luck of the draw having had so many go on in parallel. Matt has done an excellent job by the way in being able to keep track of all of that. And I hope that you all find the table, the policy advice table very helpful in being able to track how things are moving forward. If you have any suggestions as to how to improve this table even further then please email Matt so as to be able to have him add any additional fields that might make it helpful. Keeping track of things is nearly as important as actually doing the things, especially for us.
So looking at the last monthly conference call that we had with the ALAC and going through the full list of discussed items, etc., one of the things we had to skip was the At-Large Prague meeting development. But everything else – we went through the update from the working groups and then we had just a few more things at the end: the reinstatement of public SO and AC sessions during the Prague ICANN meeting, the ALAC policy issues to be part of the Policy Webinar, etc. Any comments or questions regarding this specific agenda? As far as the action items are concerned on this we’ve gone through them, so the floor is open for discussion on our last meeting.
Evan, you have the floor.
Evan Leibovitch: Hi. I just wanted to say I’m very happy to note that there is a planned change in the format of the Board-ALAC meeting. It was not satisfactory in the way it was and I’m very happy to know that is being reexamined. So thanks to whoever initiated that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Evan. It was a staff follow-up between the Board support staff and our staff – it was very good. Right, I don’t see anyone jumping up and down to discuss any of the points that were made or discussed in our last meeting. Perhaps looking at our current agenda, we discussed the next Beginner’s Guide during our last meeting. It was totally at the end. It was a little but rushed. Heidi, do you have a little update for us regarding the next Beginner’s Guide?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, actually I’m just writing Alan a private note on that so my mind was focused on that. Yes, the next Beginner’s Guide will be targeted towards end users and consumers. Scott, Glenn and I have an early discussion on that. The next step will be sending out a request for information for requested copies and also documents that will be useful in preparing this document. We created a Wiki page; Matt, perhaps you can put that into the AC room. That Wiki page link will be sent to the RRR Working Group and the At-Large Improvements Taskforce Working Group as well as you, Alan, given there are some links to the PEDNR recommendations to preparing educational materials on that.
We are a bit behind but I think that we can catch up and make sure that the Guide is ready by the Prague meeting at least in English in PDF form. So that’s where we are.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you, Heidi, for this update. I see Alan has put his hand up, Alan?
Alan Greenberg: Yes, every time my name is mentioned I have to comment back. [laughter] I’ll point out that because I chaired the group that made the recommendation doesn’t mean that I’m necessarily one of the people who is best versed at meeting the requirement. I’ll certainly look at anything and edit anything but you know, that’s not my strength and hopefully there are other people who think this is important enough that they want to get involved also.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Alan. Next, looking at the whole listing and just quickly reading through, there is one item which I just wanted to note, that the reinstatement of the joint SO and AC sessions subject which was touched on quite briefly. There was a request, a call out basically for the subjects that we would be suggesting to be touched on at those joint SO and AC sessions, and so far only Tijani has commented on this. We have the link on the chat at the moment; I would suggest that you all come up with suggestions as well and perhaps actively ask your regions for suggestions on those. These are really important. They’re very well attended and they usually are run in a fantastic way. Well, I hope that they will be taking [Patrick Sherry] again to run those because he used to do an absolutely fantastic job. I remember in my early days being at ICANN this was one of my most enjoyable sessions.
Certainly another suggestion we’ll add besides the one that Tijani has made is to add the suggestion of a joint SO-AC discussion on ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, SOIPA – whatever you call them, the government control or sort of whole control of the domain name system, domain takedowns and so on; a session that is pretty similar to what the ccNSO has done in Costa Rica and which was, by the way, oversubscribed, but there with the community being able to talk about it and being able to show its red, amber, or green cards when the vote takes place.
Evan?
Evan Leibovitch: Hi Olivier, this is Evan. Speaking immediately to this issue, as far as the SO and AC thing, as far as I’m concerned the three topics I’m interested in are conflict of interest, conflict of interest and conflict of interest. I also want to, while we’re still on the subject of follow-up and inter-community conversations, just to follow-up on a statement I put in the chat room expressing my frustration with the lack of follow-up on GAC/ALAC issues; and wondering if perhaps, Olivier, you can talk to the Chair of the GAC and find out if we can establish some channels that will work well because the inability to do any work with them outside of ICANN meetings s very frustrating if we want to accomplish anything at all.
We had a meeting with the GAC where there was some very, very heavy interest expressed. We had people step forward willing to help and we’ve had absolute silence from the other end. Based on the conversations I know there are other people there that wanted to get involved but we just seem to be at a roadblock when it comes to trying to set this up and doing anything between meetings. Is there anything at all we can do about this? We’ve got some very, very good common purpose between the GAC and ALAC on a number of key issues and I would really not like to waste this opportunity.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, thank you, Evan, for raising this and in fact, well part of the non-movement this specific week has actually come down to me because I have not actually written to Heather due to a workload of so many other things to do. But that’s high on my agenda and I would say as an action item by the end of the weekend I will have an email sent out to Heather on that, noting of course that we were looking at a more extensive amount of work with the common working group working on the COI; and working on the second point which I forget right now, which the GAC and the ALAC could work on together.
I noticed that Heidi has put a question on the chat. I’ll let Alan speak first and then we’ll have a look at Heidi’s question. Alan?
Alan Greenberg: Thank you. With regard to Evan’s comment, and a similar comment has been made a number of times before – if I put up my hand in a meeting and said “I am interested in working on X,” I would not take that as being “The ALAC or AT-Large is interested in working on X.” So if the representative from the Council of Europe or the EU or Portugal at a meeting said “Yes, I am interested in talking about human rights,” or whatever the particular issue is, I think we should be contacting them directly. Whoever’s interested on our side should be establishing a dialog and not waiting for the GAC to take it up. The GAC as a whole may not give a damn.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep. Parts of the GAC may not be able to be involved.
Alan Greenberg: Well that, too, certainly on things having to do with human rights you’re not going to get the GAC necessarily taking a strong position. So I think we really need to get out of this mode that the GAC is a uniform thing. The reason the GAC has not participated in so many ICANN activities is as soon as one GAC member stands up and says something it is taken to be a GAC position; and as a result they stopped talking a few years ago in virtually any venue because of that. So if interest is expressed then we need to go back to those individuals, and they may be able to carry it forward and eventually make it a GAC issue but we shouldn’t presume it’s a GAC issue and ask the Chair of the GAC “What are you going to do about this?” I think it’s not a productive way of going forward, thank you.
Carlton Samuels: Yeah, it’s the way they work. We have to get used to it. They are very particular about not having any part comment being seen as a generic GAC position.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Cheryl and then Alan.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, I was about to actually retype “hand up” again because I didn’t know I was in the queue. Thank you, Cheryl for the transcript record. To some extent in response to Evan’s point but primarily to the topic you’ve got on your agenda with the AC/SO issue, Olivier, a good opportunity for these truly cross-community, and this is not a cross-community work group but cross-community in terms of the public interfacing or component parts of ICANN at one of these meetings together to do either hypotheticals or chew the fat or debate or whatever it is that one decides to do in these opportunities with the SO/AC joint activities is extremely valuable and is in fact one way that you can encourage forward movement on some of the topics such as what ALAC and GAC have in common.
Because they were seen as a threat to some, and I think that was their original intention – believe me, that was their original intention – one of the reasons it has to be on a Monday was because the GAC as the GAC, wanted to make sure that they the GAC were able to be in the room for it and to contribute wholly to it. So I think that in itself, if we get the topics right – and the topics need to be as interesting to all component parts of ICANN as it is to us or individuals of us – I think that that might actually help, Evan, with getting some of the things forward because it allows people to have debate in a frank, fearless but nevertheless safe space.
Things like the red, orange, green card system which was totally pooh-poohed by a number of people – I actually thought it was a good concept, getting a temperature of the room. Perhaps all these days we could have an app for that and we could have a score going up and down as to how the community feels about what people are saying as we’re doing these cross-community activities. Sorry, I’ve got a 55 kilo dog trying to sit on my lap.
Whilst that was pooh-poohed a matter of years back it’s actually something that I’ve seen become a stock standard approach; for example, the ccNSO used that recently as a mechanism in its meeting with members to gauge their ideas on a number of points as to whether or not they should be prioritized differently by the ccNSO Council. So some of the stuff, it was a good idea but at the wrong time back then so we can revisit some of those tools.
And Olivier, in terms of topics, one of the topics I would suggest would be the topic of what is the type of material that is most suitable for joint or cross-community activities; and that would also lead us into what I think a number of the component parts of ICANN are looking at. And certainly as a ccNSO Liaison I can report that the ccNSO is looking at it and that is what we should be having with genuine cross-community work groups. A lot of people have some challenge by what the GNSO has put out. They say “Okay, alright, it is internal but what does that then mean? If the GNSO adopts what they’ve got out for public comment, then what?” So I think there’s a whole lot of ground that could be had in a cross-community forum to design what cross-community should do. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl, good point. I hope that all of your suggestions, that each one of us here will actually write those suggestions on the (inaudible) – they’re all very valid.
Evan Leibovitch: Olivier, my hand is up as a follow-up.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, Evan.
Evan Leibovitch: Sorry, one other follow-up on the conversations that we’ve been having about the GAC-ALAC interaction, since you’re going to be making a new contact with Heather in the near future can I make a suggestion that you add one point to the conversation; and that is to get her consent on our engagement with individual GAC members who have indicated an interest in specific issues. It’s certainly possible to go back through the transcript of the past meeting and find out who the individual members are who were interested in specific issues. So without having to engage Heather on every single issue, with her consent it could be possible as has been mentioned to engage some other members of the GAC working in their individual capacities and start to move forward on things. That would probably speed up things considerably. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, thank you, Evan, and actually this was the next thing I was going to touch on, responding to the discussions that have taken place just now. The first question I’d like to ask staff is whether we finally now got a transcript of the GAC-ALAC meeting in Costa Rica, because I know that several transcripts were missing and certainly I couldn’t access this one for a while. So I haven’t checked recently if we do have it. We do have it, yes?
Heidi Ullrich: I’m just asking Nathalie to double check on that. I think you have the list of the transcripts.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Because this has been a source of frustration for me not being able to have many of the transcripts. We don’t have a transcript for some of our own sessions; you know, the Working Session doesn’t have a transcript yet. And I’m sorry, the Working Session is nine hours long… Well, the one on Sunday now finally has a transcript, it’s 200 and something pages long. I was not going to listen to nine hours to try and find what we said at 3:45 on Sunday afternoon after the coffee break, and unfortunately it was all in one piece. So I hope that once we do have these transcripts then we can definitely identify the individual GAC members that emitted an interest; and then also find out if there was an action item that came out of this.
Because if there was an action item that the GAC and the ALAC have to come together then we wouldn’t have to have all of the GAC involved, or at Heather’s discretion then let the individual GAC members be able to speak to the individual GAC members. If on the other hand it’s just an individual GAC member saying “I am interested in this” then I don’t even think that we need to obtain any consent from Heather whatsoever because we can get in contact with that individual member ourselves. And I hope I didn’t get disconnected there because if I did I’m not going to repeat all of what I’ve just said.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Cheryl here. [laughing]
Evan Leibovitch: Olivier, I don’t think you need permission but awareness probably is a good idea.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Of course. In contacting any GAC members it’s common courtesy to carbon copy the Chair. And I’m sure Heather would appreciate that. So right, we have an action item on that and as I said I’ll immediately get down to this over the weekend and send this out. The other action item that I do have on my plate just for the record is to send the ICANN Academy invites and I’m sending them as separate invites to each Chair of SOs, ACs and stakeholders – all separately.
So that’s the review of the 17th of April ALAC meeting. Any other comments about any of the parts? I see two people with their hands up: Alan and then Tijani. Alan first.
Alan Greenberg: I just wanted to reinforce what was just said, that ALAC interacting with a GAC member, you should copy Heather perhaps. An individual person who has expressed interest and wants to explore a little bit more with a particular GAC member I’m not sure why one even has to copy Heather on that; one certainly can. But we need more communication and it’s going to have to start one-on-one, and as soon as you copy the Chair there’s an implication that this is a GAC action. I think there may be a negative. I mean you want to clear it with Heather obviously but I think there’s almost a negative impact of copying the Chair to formalize the process, and at early stages I think that’s the last thing you want to do. But it’s Heather’s opinion that counts, not mine. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you Alan. Tijani and then Cheryl, so Tijani first.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you. If we will work with only one member of the GAC then public consultation is not the problem. But if we come up with a statement together then it will be a statement between At-Large and governments, [attendant] governments. Is this possible?
Alan Greenberg: To answer that if you were addressing it at me, I think initial contact for a discussion of interest is a far way away from a formal statement. So if we ever get to the point where we want a formal statement either that GAC member says “Yes, I want to participate,” or they try to get the GAC involved, but I think that’s way down the road from what we’re talking about now. Cheryl said she had her hand up.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, I know, she’s coming up. But first just in response to you, there is an action item though coming out of our ALAC-GAC meeting which says that we will be working at or looking at producing a joint statement. So it’s fine to say yes we’ll have bilateral discussions but certainly the joint statement is an important thing.
Alan Greenberg: I understand but I was talking the general case of how do we get the roadblock out of the way of doing any work with the GAC. I wasn’t speaking on a particular issue.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I think we’re all in violent agreement there. Cheryl?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: And this is why I raised the point, that [we will be issuing a joint statement between the ALAC and the governments].
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, Cheryl for the transcript record. I think what we need to get really clear here is what the intentions are of each of these interactions, and I think we need to be clear with the GAC and with ourselves what we expect out of each thing. Yes, it can be frustrating to deal with the GAC but yes, it can be incredibly rewarding to deal with a subgroup of individual governments where the At-Large Structural representatives and regional representatives – yes, they indeed may even be ALAC members – have close working relationships with those people. And that may be a way to get something higher up a GAC agenda as well.
But we really need to make sure how we work with GAC jointly and severally depends on what we want as the end game. If, as I thought we wanted, some particular joint statements then it’s got to be at that higher level – ALAC/GAC. If it’s not then that’s entirely different, but even that hasn’t been established as an operational procedure with the GAC yet. We’ve still got a long way to go but we’ve actually come a long way since 2007 when they refused to even meet with us.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl, thanks for that update. I think we can move on now from this part of the call and move to the next one, which is Item #6 – developing an At-Large SOI template. So as we’ve briefly mentioned earlier, and I think we can go through this quite quickly since I note we are behind schedule here. There is a link to the GNSO Statement of Interest Wiki and you can see on the Connect you can see the GNSO statement of interest. I wonder, how many of you have filed a GNSO SOI yet through that system? I see Evan has and Alan as well, and yes from Cheryl as well.
How did you find this use-wise? Was it easy to use? Would you say that, and I’m looking at a statement of interest from the At-Large community; would you say that there are any obvious points which might prevent our community from using this? Evan?
Evan Leibovitch: Sorry, just going off mute. I didn’t have any problem using it. Confluence has a very nice way that says “You’re creating a new page but you’re creating it from an existing template,” and so the mechanics of doing that aren’t actually particularly difficult. My problem is more actually in the contents of the template than in the template itself or how easy it is to use. Yesterday-
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Evan, that’s fine because that’s the GNSO template. If we are okay with the actual structure then the next step is for us to develop our own template: what do we want to see in our template? And that’s the reason why we’re bringing it into this call, the discussion into this call.
Evan Leibovitch: Actually, the point I’m trying to make though is I think this is an area where we really need to get out of the silo. There’s absolutely no reason why my statement of interest in ALAC should be any different from my statement of interest for GNSO whether we’re working with any cross-community working group or anything else.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep, or the ccNSO or [SSAC].
Evan Leibovitch: I’m trying to put forward the point of view that there should be a statement of interest for a volunteer that is applicable and usable throughout ICANN. The idea of one that’s separate for GNSO and separate for ALAC is something I’d really, really like to avoid or get away from, or work to consolidate. Thanks.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Evan. Next is Alan.
Alan Greenberg: Thank you. Just to note that saying we could use a common one does not mean we use the GNSO one. The GNSO one right now has questions on it very specific to the GNSO, so you know…
Evan Leibovitch: Alan, I agree with you which is why I’m saying to have a common one. There’s some other in fact questions that I think they’re missing and yesterday I received an email from someone on ICANN’s staff contact named Ken Bauer who said that they’ve made a small change in the template and asked me to fill out some new information because there was a new Point #4; and I took the opportunity to say that I thought that the statement was deficient and have asked him to reconsider some of the wording. And in fact I’m going to paste an excerpt of that letter.
Alan Greenberg: Evan, many of us got that same message, I know. I wasn’t saying you were disagreeing; I was simply pointing out that what is in the GNSO statement of interest was decided by the GNSO. We may want to go forward and try to find some common ground between is, and that’s something where future action needs to be taken. I’m not disagreeing-
Evan Leibovitch: So essentially Olivier makes this a part of the AC/SO conversation?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Mm-hmm.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I can definitely do that. I was just going to ask though to Alan, how long has it taken the GNSO Council… Is it the GNSO Council that has worked on this or who, what was the process in defining what the questions were and what the fields were?
Alan Greenberg: The GNSO Council has had a statement of interest concept as long as I’ve been around in work rooms, and I believe the specific questions asked were indeed part of what was done by the Operations Group that set up a lot of their rules and procedures. Cheryl was involved in it, I wasn’t.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep.
Alan Greenberg: But one of the things they did is decide what questions should be asked and that kind of stuff. So it’s not something that staff is going to unilaterally change on their behalf but it’s something that could certainly be discussed, and I don’t think they’d be particularly objectionable to it. They may want to flag certain questions which are mandatory for GNSO people and we might answer with questions that are mandatory for ALAC – that doesn’t mean we can’t have an overall superset that applies to all. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Alan, but what happens then if there are questions mandatory for GNSO and questions mandatory for ALAC, and questions mandatory for the ccNSO? Does one then not end up then with a huge template of which only a subset which needs to be filled in? Could that just confuse people?
Alan Greenberg: At which point we’ve decided that having a common one is impractical. So I don’t think there’s going to be that much, that it’s going to be that different but maybe, I don’t know. I mean I think it’s mandatory that a GNSO person say they’re involved in a specific GNSO constituency or stakeholder group. You can’t tell them not to ask the question; it’s not a particularly relevant one for us. For us what region you come from may be relevant.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And Cheryl, you mentioned that you were in the working group that defined those fields.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep. [laughing]
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Was it a long process or…
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We did it in parallel with a whole bunch of other rules.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, and that was just one thing. Evan?
Evan Leibovitch: I guess I’m just surprised at the thought that a statement of interest for ALAC would be so different from a statement of interest for GNSO. The one that exists currently says “Please identify your declared country of primary residence.” Okay, so some of the regional consideration is in there. “How are you involved?” In fact, the new addition that they just made says “What is your ICANN affiliation if not otherwise covered by a stakeholder group or constituency?” So they’re already on their way there towards something that is more generalized. I’m actually staggered by the implication that a statement of interest that would be valid for the GNSO would be substantially different from one that would be valid for ALAC.
Alan Greenberg: I’m not sure anyone has said that. I think Olivier is asking what if it is but I don’t think the premise is all that important at this point. If we go down the road and find out “My God, we’re really a different species,” then so be it – we’ve learned something about it. It’ll be interesting.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you everyone. I will be taking this up with the SO/AC Work Group Chairs and finding out which way to go on there. Has the ccNSO looked at this in any way or does the ccNSO have separate SOIs or not have any SOIs whatsoever?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We don’t have any SOIs whatsoever because the majority of the ccNSO, the member base is well known and transparent. You are either a regulator or operator of a ccTLD.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, Heidi?
Heidi Ullrich: Thank you, Olivier, this is Heidi for the record. Just to let everyone know, unless Olivier has already said this, that Ken Bauer the consultant who produced the template for the GNSO will be able to work with the ALAC or the ExCom to develop the ALAC statement of interest template like this. So I would like to know what are the next steps in terms of timing, in terms of what are the groups that Ken will be working with so I can let him know that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Heidi. And then there’s always the question is, if we start a project to have a common template to be used all across ICANN it might take months, several months or at least that’s the perception I have, that we risk having months of discussion prior to anything even happening. If on the other hand we have our own template, and as you’ve just heard Ken Bauer is able to produce this pretty quickly and hopefully I guess within the next few weeks or so. Apparently the GNSO system is very easily copied over to the ALAC pages and we could have our own SOI pages, including all of our people as in community, basically, being able to file in their SOIs in no time or in a lesser amount of time than going for a common statement.
So in the long term yes, a common SOI may be the way forward but in the short term I’m not so sure. Tijani and then Alan, and then back to Heidi since Heidi has her hand up. So Tijani first.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you, Olivier. I think that we could develop our own SOI, we can be guided by the GNSO one but as a further step we can try to harmonize all the SOIs of the SO and AC constituencies. But as a first step we have to define our own one. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Tijani. Alan?
Alan Greenberg: Thank you. I guess the only proper way to do this is to say no, I disagree. I think we should not do anything until we can do a perfect thing that applies to everyone and get the whole world to agree. NOT! [laughing] I’m not sure why we’re having a discussion. If a modest amount of work can give us something useful and useable and get us past this point of not even having statements of interest for a lot of the participants in our working group why would we not do it and then try to harmonize later if that’s possible?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so it’s another case of us being in violent agreement yet again. How many more hours would you like to discuss this? Maybe we can cut this discussion short.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: You can join me for breakfast. [I’ll be doing that] in a couple of hours.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: [laughing] Thank God. And I notice in the chat that the idea of taking the GNSO template and having it tailored to our needs by Ken Bauer who says that he is able to do that as a first step is a good step forward. As a longer-term goal, integrating all of the SO and AC SOIs into a common system is probably an excellent way forward especially since we are taking part in more than one working group and sometimes in some GNSO working groups and etc. It’s good to sometimes put everything together in the long term.
Evan Leibovitch: Actually Olivier, I would go a step further and say we can take this from little work to almost no work. I think we should ask everyone on the ALAC to fill out the GNSO form in its current state right now without needing any modification. There’s ways certainly from the people here on this call who put in SOIs; they are totally ALAC relevant. And frankly before having to spend any time with Ken on any revisions to it I think we need to as a starting point have everybody use that form and we don’t need to muck about with even modifying that right now. Let’s at least get everyone having a statement in there and then let’s work about tuning the questions.
Alan Greenberg: It’s Alan. I personally think it’s worth an hour’s discussion to say we don’t need to ask what GNSO constituency are you a member of, but we may want to ask what ALS are you a member of and other things like that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, exactly.
Evan Leibovitch: And if you look at mine you’ll see how I’ve been able to accommodate that using the existing form.
Alan Greenberg: But then we need instructions saying “In this field this is what you should really answer.”
Evan Leibovitch: Then that’s an instruction; that’s not changing the form.
Alan Greenberg: Okay, I’m not going to debate it more. I don’t think it’s worthy of a lot of debate.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: [laughing] After allocating ten minutes to this we are now on the 20-minute mark on this point – maybe we should just move on. I appreciate both points of view and we’ll see with Ken Bauer how much work is required and take it from there. In the meantime if you could just suggest if we were able to add additional fields, just suggest which fields to add. That would be useful, and just send it over to the ExCom list and we’ll take the discussion there.
Now over to #7 and we’re half an hour over time already beyond our 1.5 hour allocated time. Any other business from anyone? And Evan, you have put your hand up.
Evan Leibovitch: Oh sorry, still there from the last bit.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you. So any other business? Heidi, do you have to add to any other points that we’ve touched on that you wanted to just share with us?
Heidi Ullrich: Two points, again both related to Prague. The templates now are open so the staff will be beginning to submit those meeting confirmation forms, so please, if you have not yet confirmed any meetings that you would like please let us know. And the second point related to Prague is if you could please let us know the topics you would like to have discussed with the GAC. The GAC support staff has put in a request for that. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Heidi, and it’s interesting to note that in the past we went to the GAC first to ask for subjects but now they’re the ones initiating the discussion, so a very good point forward. And it’s also good to see that they’re getting organized which is great.
Alan Greenberg: Sorry to interrupt, it’s Alan. I’ve got to drop off right now so thank you for the meeting.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much. Well in fact, we all have to drop off right now so I’d like to thank all of you for lasting that long and thanks for the amazing amount of work you’ve all done this week – we are really doing well. So thanks to all of you and this call is now finished, closed, over.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Terminated with extreme prejudice.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you. Have a good weekend everyone!
[End of Transcript]
