Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Hi, well, good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all of you. This is an exceptional ALAC Executive Committee conference call, that's going to deal specifically with the Joint Applicant Support working group and what I basically thought is we've got very little time until we are reaching the time when we need to give that report in, so the time that which the JAS has to submit their report to us, and I just wanted to try and get us all to discuss what the challenges are, and where we are at now, what do we still need to do, what can we do to help that group.
So the first thing I wanted to get, because I'm not sure if all of us are following so closely, I wanted to get an idea of - a recap of the current JAS group status, what's going on with regards to the drafting and also, I think maybe we can patch both two and three together in the agenda, because I gather that Evan is also going to speak to us about what's going on inside the JAS drafting team.
Is there anything else that anyone wants to discuss in addition to what's one the agenda so far?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: No, Olivier, but I wanted you to be on the Adobe Connect, so that you will see my hand when I raise my hand.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: It's logging in very slow here at the moment -
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, it's been -
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And is connecting really slowly -
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: -- it does take room since Olivier joined the call, and still the little blue line is still only a third of the way through, so it's taking a long time to load.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And people are still here clearing on my screen, but Tijani, you're not on there yet.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: I am there. I am the only one with Adigo go now on my screen.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Are you sure you're on the right screen, on the ALAC ExCom Meetings, January to March 2011?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yeah - oh, July.
Evan Leibovitch: Olivier, January to March or April to July?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I know that bizarre, well they link on the Google with setting January to March.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Sorry, it's the April to July one that's actually on the Google calendar.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: April to July, I have it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Sorry, hang on; I'm in the wrong month.
Evan Leibovitch: The site I'm being pointed to is ALAC ExCom Maaprjul2011.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh, sorry the wrong - sorry the wrong one was put in the -
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: The Adobe.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, sorry about that I'll Skype it to you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yeah, no I've got it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh you've got it-
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So I should be arriving in the new one, I'm there now.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Sorry about that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So I don't see any hands up at the moment, but did you have your hand up Tijani?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: No, no, no, no.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Ah, okay. So the first question, yes, do we want - is the agenda okay with everyone or is there anything else that you wish to discuss on this?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: I think its okay.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And I hear no objection from anyone else, so I gather that it's all fine, and so we'll start with the first part which is - oh, Evan did you try and put your hand up, because your Adobe crashed?
Evan Leibovitch: No, no, I'm in the Adobe room now, so I think I'm in - do you see me?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: You are one it, yeah, I can see you there now, yeah. The only person I can't see is Cheryl, I gather Cheryl you're not on the Adobe?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: You know I told you before, the other one was taking forever to load, I'm not attempting the second one, and it's loading in its own free time.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: The same thing okay. All right, so let's get on with it; and Evan would you be able to give us a recap of the current status of the JAS, and also what's happening in the drafting team, please?
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. So essentially - well, every one of you has been on the JAS calls at one time or another. I think it's safe to say that Tijani and myself have been the most deeply involved.
And where things are standing now is it has been trying to go beyond the milestone report that is already made, was already sent out to Trondheim, and to try and turn that into a more finalized document that would be usable by whomever, you know as we go forward. There's been a lot of fits and starts, there have been people coming, mainly people leaving, there was incident with Avery a couple of weeks ago where she and Karla basically met in an airport and figured that they were going to take things in a slightly different direction.
There was pushback on that, and as a result Avery left in a very - I think tumultuous is not a wrong word to use. The group has been in sometimes paralyzed by process in the last couple of weeks, there's been some - there's been some progress made trying to move forward on substantive issues. But we're really in a situation where the expectations in this group are extremely high, the amount of work and the amount of feedback it's supposed to give are extremely large.
The number of people that are working on it, is dropping, and the - personally, if I didn't know any better, I'd swear this was one of those instances where it was almost being designed to fail, because of the tight deadlines, the huge expectations, the fact that you have the Board saying, well we're waiting for the JAS to do something and you have the GAC saying we're waiting for the JAS to do something, and you know the something is not defined by them.
They're not participating, and yet you have the GNSO that has basically, if not pulled out, to drastically reduced its participation, I'd say there's no more than two or three people from the GNSO involved in the group any more. In terms of trying to move forward, what you had then was the acceptance of a drafting team which was myself, Dev, Cintra and Andrew Mack to try and go off and to see what we could do in terms of producing wording, with the intention that you have a couple of people that are trying to put pen to paper, trying to produce a document, that then the rest of the group would either accept, reject or mange beyond recognition. And forgive my language, but it's been very, very frustrating to work in this environment, it's probably been the most difficult working group for me to deal with since coming into ICANN.
Anyway, so where things are right now, is that the working team has been involved with two documents, one of which is a Wiki document that I started which was an attempt to try and simplify things. And to take the work that has been done to date on the milestone report and try to summarize existing discussions that have gone on since, and the reason for this being number one, because we need - we need an easy to read summary of what we've been doing, because the detailed document is very long and involved.
The detailed document would number one lay out clearly the direction we're trying to go, but also the creation of that summary document also exposed a lot of areas where the group had been working at a detailed level on so much, while quite a few very large big picture issues were still yet to be resolved. And hopefully creating that summary document was going to expose some of those omissions. And that's where we are right now.
We have a Wiki document that - we have a Wiki document, and we have a more detailed document that has - that has the procedures, and so right now, the group has been working on and discussing those two documents. Is it capable of doing - of finishing the job and what I'm told is in less than two weeks required - you know less than two weeks, which is the necessary timeline in order to get things in the hands of the Board and the GAC and everybody whose been asking this for - asking for this?
Not only that, but then we have the further issue that the Charters that the group is working for explicitly states that the group cannot go back to the Board directly, but must go through the GNSO and/or ALAC. I'm almost taking it as an act of faith that the GNSO will not endorse anything that the JAS group does because it didn't even endorse the milestone report. Anyway, that's it for my basic introduction and we'll take it from there.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Evan. I have a couple of questions for you; the first one being in the documents that have been drafted, have you considered Avery's initial document that she had submitted?
Evan Leibovitch: Yes. It had been considered and I believe parts of it have been incorporated into the detailed document.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, and the other question was the documents that are written, are they taking into account the actual Charter that the ALAC has voted, the vision which the ALAC gave, does the document actually follow that mission?
Evan Leibovitch: Essentially, the answer is yes, and to make that explicit, one of the things that Cintra has as a personal task of hers is to go through the existing documents and to match them up against the explicit Charter issues.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so that document is a good -
Evan Leibovitch: It's probably being done a little backwards in the sense that first we've determined what the group has been talking about and working on, and now we've charged ourselves with matching this up against the Charter.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, there's nothing wrong in doing that. You know obviously it needs to work in a certain - so as to answer the questions which are asked. Tijani, you have your hand up.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, yes, thank you. I think that the most important point here we encountered in this work is that there is a lot of newcomers in the group. And the newcomers they want to begin from the beginning, and it's normal – they are not aware of what was done before. And also there is a little tendency going further than the mission of the Charter.
So this was the trend inside the group, but all the time, me, I always try to make things clear that we have to follow our Charter, and for that we don't have to repeat what was done.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I think partly one of the reasons why the mission crete was we can share in that took place without trying to point the finger in any direction, the fact that when such a wide group like this starts going into a subject that is also a very wide subject, you constantly need to refocus it.
Thankfully, and Evan has actually acknowledged this as well, and I've noticed that - that when Carlton runs the meeting, things get a lot more focused and people don't go into tangents. And the other -
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, yes and no. I've been far from satisfied with the progress even when we - on the occasions that Carlton does Chair in recent time, and one of the complaints I hear back from other members of the Work Group is that it is all too easy to have the Chair's particular personal criteria and interests being discussed as opposed to the agenda that was set.
And that I think is another layer of frustration. That said, that's not something - that's not something that we can do about, that's something that I think the erratic way that this is being chaired, where we had - you know, we have not had any consistent Chairing at all. And the quality of it has been poor at average, and occasionally invariably satisfactory, but also infrequently.
One of the other issues I think apart from the fact that the agenda has been appalling and that same process, driven instead of productive is also that we really don't have a clear linking to the documents that are being edited. I don't think the majority of the Work Group has looked at the substantive doc treatment that the draft team has done yet. It certainly you know kept going back to the Wiki one, but that’s, you know, not good enough I think without at least having a synopsis being looked at. And can it be done in time? By the skin of its teeth, that we've been saying this for several weeks.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And this is one main reasons why I've put this call together. It might be that we have to put some of our hands in there and give it a push, due to the amount of pressure there is, and certainly the light that is shining on ALAC at the moment. Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, thank you. The main mission of the Chair is to find consensus, and till now we have documents produced - very good documents. There is comments on those documents, but right now, we don't know what is the part on which we have consultants, because the Chair never tried to find the consultants and to highlight it, so this is the main problem I think.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, what do you think, those on the call, do you think that's a valid point, and is there maybe a worth here reminding the Chair that he might wish to gain consensus on what's been written so far, maybe fire off an email on the list?
Evan Leibovitch: I'll be blunt with you and say that I don't even think we're ready for that. I don't even think that we've adequately identified the things that need consensus before even determining if that consensus has been reached. I mean it's not even that far along.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: There's certainly past 2.3 in the - in the Wiki document. 2.3, 2.4 was skipped over and 2.5 and 2.6 have been vaguely dealt with.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So what do we do now to get things moving forward?
Evan Leibovitch: Cheryl, are you referring to the Wiki document that I just put up in the Adobe room? The link that I just put up?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Let me click on that one as opposed to the ones that seems to currently open in my - my -
Evan Leibovitch: Because I can certainly tell you that the one that -
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, well, see that's part of the problem. That is the one - we haven't been discussing that in any of our meetings. It's referred to, it's never linked to, it takes half the meeting to get to this document, and you know it's not - this - the text on this page and I would have thought on the more substantive document should have been on screen and been worked through in a structured way for the last several weeks.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, absolutely.
Evan Leibovitch: I think Cheryl; the term violent agreement would apply here?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: With all of us.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And this - this document is just not being managed, I don't mean the productivity that's been done building this document, but if we're going to do anything, then this literally, this text needs to be on everyone's screen at the next JAS Work Group meeting and you know stuff needs to go into it.
Now, part of the - any other business that I wanted to raise the other day was, Evan, I appreciate the fact that you've indicated that Avery's documentation has been incorporated or at least discussed and dealt with in a way that I'm certainly unclear about; in the writings that I can't tell you, and I can't find is it in this document, or is it in the former document; nor can I find any link to that material where I would like to have started to take some of the wordy things, the things that we did actually agree to at least on the call, when we were discussing Avery's document.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, and it's just not to easy to find out where any contribution from any of the meetings when there's actually been (inaudible) enough to decide an agreement or a contribution has been made has gone into any of the documents, certainly not in this one, but perhaps in the larger documents that - but where is Avery's document? Literally, the raw material of it. I can't find it.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay, but -
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And to this I might have question wise, whose responsibility is it to have those documents put on there?
Evan Leibovitch: Okay, let me put a time out in that for moment, Cheryl, and I'll just - I'll just give you my own point of view based on what I thought the writing team was charged with. I have taken the view, and I don't know if everybody agrees with it, but it's certainly the one that I've been working under myself as I've moving forward is that the group doesn't even agree on the high level issues, such as the - you know even the basic formulas, and nail down all the criteria, because there are new ones being added.
The group hasn't even agreed on the big picture issues. If they haven't agreed on the big picture issues, to me working at a break neck pace on the detail issues seems almost moot. You know I don't expect everybody to agree with me on that, but the idea that we can do a lot of substantive work on the details before we even have an idea at a foundation level of what we're doing, just seems to be to be working backwards.
That's why in fact I tried to do the Wiki document and to try and nail down whether the criteria - what is the formula, at a high level, because if we can't nail this down, then coming up with the detailed methods of how we're going to actually apply the filters it seems if not - it just seems to me to be totally working backwards. And what I've been trying to do myself is to nudge the group into agreeing on the big picture decisions, before moving on to the nitty gritty detail, especially as we get into this compressed time line, and you know if we come back at the end of the time line and say well we have the details all worked out, but we don't have the big picture formulas done, we're going to get laughed at.
And so that's the premise under which I've been working. I've been putting most of my effort, and in fact, the drafting team has been putting most of its efforts into the high level document with the intention of trying to get the working group on the same page when it comes to - these are the fundamentals of what we're trying to work on. If we don't have the fundamentals agreed to, agreeing on the detail seems almost pointless. That's the premise under which the working team has been working.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The drafting team -
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, Cheryl.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I just said I've seen Evan mention the drafting team, not the working group has been working on that.
Evan Leibovitch: Sorry, correct, I'm confusing my teams.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, thank you. Perhaps one of the ways to solve the problem Evan is mentioning now is to put the original proposal of the drafting team, and put the comment that was done - or the alternative idea that was proposed by members of the team together and ask the group, which one you want to approve, because I have made a lot of if you want comments and we are still there.
So I think that we have to ask the group if they want to for example any - one of the points for example, if they want to for example emphasis on the multi-string application which is not in our mission, which is not in the (inaudible) report. So we have to solve those problems and this way I think, because if we don't - if we don't ask the group to choose, they will not.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay, Tijani, my answer for you is I think - I think this is already being dealt with, that whole thing of the multi-string, that's the whole reason why I wanted this high level document. If you look at that Wiki page, you don't see the words multi-string anywhere in that document. There is one sentence that says that there's some people that have advocated the concept of bundling, there's no - and it's accurate, because it hasn't reached consensus.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: You load it now, because this morning I opened it, and it was there.
Evan Leibovitch: I'm looking at the Wiki page right now, and I'm looking at the one line that refers to bundling, and -
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay.
Evan Leibovitch: -- and I'm you know this is an example of my attempt in this document to accurately reflect both the milestone report and the current mood of the group. That was the purpose of this Wiki document. If this summary can't be agreed to, then working on the details underneath it, seems almost a diversion.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, then when has the Work Group discussed in detail this document? This is not criticism of the document, I'm asking when has the Work Group looked at, as a group, this document, I imagine Tijani can tell me because -
Evan Leibovitch: And that's a reasonable question, and the best answer I can give you and of course most of you have been on this calls and the answer is it has not.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That says I remember it correct. It has not.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay and -
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think that -
Evan Leibovitch: Cheryl, I don't mean to pass the buck here, but I guess we can probably agree that this is another issue that has to do with the quality of the Chairing of the meeting.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It is an appalling prepared Work Group.
Evan Leibovitch: The drafting team has gone out and done what it's been asked to do, try and gel the mood of the group, it's up to the group now to say does this accurately reflect us?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And I was saying the Work Group needs to look at text and go from top to bottom and in text, this is an example of important and essential text, that that exercise needs to be portrayed.
Evan Leibovitch: But Cheryl, I also have to tell you that the link for this, as well as an urgent message to look at it, went out from me more than two weeks ago, and the amount of feedback that has been - that is received has been pitiful. The amount of work that has been done between the phone calls, either on the (crosstalk) comments or -
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Evan, (crosstalk) normal for almost every Work Group in the known Universe that ICANN deals with, so fine that's normal, but that's in fact why proper management in the Work Group call needs to be deployed. And the question I would like to see or try and grapple with is can enough of that be done between now and our deadline.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: You take the words right out of my mouth Cheryl. There are three JAS calls theoretically until the 7th, which looks as though this might be our deadline, and can we do all of that in three JAS calls? Do we need to beef up, have more JAS calls maybe?
Evan Leibovitch: Well, before we answer that question, we want to, I think Olivier; we need to move onto the next part of your agenda, which is the third party conversations, because they are going to impact the answer to that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, excellent idea, Evan. And so we'll start with - because okay, that third party has spoken to you, to me and to Tijani as well. I'm not sure, Cheryl, has he spoken to you or not?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No, I'm in the dark, so please fill me in.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay, Bertrand has been seeking out one on one conversations with various individuals, as opposed to engaging the group as a whole?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, I'm aware of that end of some of the tidbits that have been put inside chats relating to that.
Evan Leibovitch: So I don't know when the other ones happened, Bertrand insisted on the phone call with me actually happening during the last ALAC conference call, which is why I was sort of multitasking with one ear on both conversations. The result of that, at least from my point of view is that Bertrand was advancing what appeared to be common wisdom in the Board and common wisdom within ICANN at large, that the whole JAS issue should be tackled by having some kind of a fund that is seeded by ICANN but perhaps fund raised for more money, and that there would be some kind of a body of experts that would take a broad and somewhat vague criteria that would be agreed to by the JAS, and would apply that criteria against the various applications and against of the amount of pool money available.
That is how I understood the common wisdom of the Board to be in place according to the way Bertrand described it. I have asked back to him that the group has been pushing back against the idea of a subsidy fund for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is that the nature of this in fact goes against the whole point of cost recovery and it goes against the whole point of ICANN affirming it's own responsibility to support groups and essentially punting it off to a third party to apply charity and subsidy.
It forces applications to compete with each other to demonstrate that one is more worthy than the other, because they are competing with each, for a finite pool of funds. It further punts ICANN responsibility onto another Board of experts, well, we hated the idea with the DRSP, and I don't think anybody likes the idea anymore here with the idea of ICANN trying to shirk its own responsibility by punting determination into a Board of experts. And so this conversation went back and forth.
As a result I think Bertrand had a couple of new insights that he did not have before the call. He seemed to appreciate the concept that we did not want to have this looking like charity. We did not want to have applications competing with each other for worthiness, and so one of the - and the other thing that I had mentioned to him was my frustration, not only at the pace that the group was working, but also with the fact that it had extremely high expectations, by stakeholders who were not participating. So you have both the GAC and the Board that are saying something needs to be done, without themselves offering any support to the accomplishment of doing it. And Bertrand seemed to agree with that as well.
So one of the action items we actually took away from that, and it's one of the things that I want to bring up and in fact advocate on this call are a couple of things; first of which, the total decoupling of the JAS work and in fact of the application support from the DAG itself. It appears the applicant guidebook is going to be approved, come hell or high water. And so one of the things that Bertrand suggested and I'm in full agreement with, is that this group and the work that it's doing be totally parallel and separate from the actual applicant guidebook.
If that happens, then we are not constrained under the timeline, and it means we can continue to work on the subsidy program, even if the applicant guidebook is approved in Singapore. So it means all of a sudden the high pressure deadlines aren't quite as bad as we may have envisioned, because we're not bound by the deadlines of the applicant guidebook.
Next, the idea of having multiple stakeholders involved in this; if the Board believes this is so important, and the GAC believes this is so important, they need some skin in the game. Right now everything is being put onto what is effectively an ALAC working group with a couple of stragglers still around from GNSO. This is far too much of a burden to put on considering that this is showing up both in Board statements, GAC statements, and whatever. Bertrand appeared to agree with me that it is important, in fact it is vital to get their engagement as we're moving forward, so we have a better idea of what it is they expect from us.
And so what he has actually suggested is the idea of a meeting in Singapore that has people from the JAS group together with people from the Board, people from the GAC, and possibly other stakeholders to essentially go into a room, thrash out the large picture ideas and then come out and deal with the details having agreed on the big picture issues.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Now going to change -
Evan Leibovitch: I'm going to stop there anyway.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: You are, okay and let Cheryl give some responses; I've seen her type -
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, I’ve typed to some extent, now in fact I've typed in JAS Work Group spaces and again and again and again with Bertrand’s input, which is all fine and dandy and you know meetings and everything else is a good way forward, and let's hope it gets that far. It still doesn't change my particular view that 1A and 1B under the Charter that we, ALAC, has given this Work Group. And it happens to be points that are agreed to in the GNSO Charter as well for this Work Group. Must be addressed, they're the ones that are particularly time critical for the May deadline, they're the ones that are - the ones that you know that please insert here from the JAS Work Group deliberation faces that are still hanging out from the interaction and outcomes from the Board and GAC deliberations.
And you know the Bertrand input which is as I say all fine and dandy, that clearly - really only goes as four way to looking at some of the issues that go under 1F, and to a larger extent under part 1C. But without having the criteria for the need and the method it's demonstrating the criteria, without some of the selection criteria and processes being established by a consensus agreement from a Work Group under the multi-stakeholder model, and the mechanisms for determining you know what considerations and what type of support should be offered, be it the cold hard cash or the other methods, they still have to go through it.
I mean I understand the desire to build the perfect cart, but we haven't even worked out whether it's seen dragged by a mouse or by a horse yet. And I think we need to focus the Work Group on at least getting more output out of the A and B and indeed C parts of the Charter.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you Cheryl, Tijani next.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, thank you. I was the first one contacted by Bertrand. And I had the impression that we are developing together an idea, we are discussing and things are coming for him. But what I read from Richard seems to be an idea of the Board, and the Board have the full idea, all the details I discussed with Bertrand are and they made up a chart, and they said this is from the Board. That means that the Board has already his mind on the question. There is - I told Bertrand that there are problems, there are problems - there are suggestions or the proposals of Bertrand have some problems.
Sure, we cannot - I am sure we cannot include the process and cite the DAG, because the timeline, because of the timeline, and because of the decision already made that and in Singapore, they will launch the new TLD program. So it will be impossible to include all our work inside the DAG, it's too late. But and the para-process is something that you cannot avoid. But a lot of elements of the proposal are a little bit problematic, I think.
Bertrand said that we don't need to set a very tight, or very precise criteria, because making this like this, we will miss people, people will not be able to join, because we didn't consider, because we cannot consider all the cases. And he's right. But any system has its imperfection and we cannot - you will never do something that will include everything. This is a point, that's right, but also the panel will decide, I am not sure it will be objective, and I am sure there will be subjectivity in the decision of the panel.
So I can't agree with the panel, but we cite criteria with - very precise criteria with our work done till the end. And I agree with Evan that we have to continue even if the DAG is already under work, and we cannot change it. So those are small problems that I encounter in this proposal. There is also the problem of the money put by ICANN. He proposed something that I told him that - I told him in French [French 0:39:44], and really it is meaningless, the amount that he told me about. But he said no, we can negotiate it, it can be more or less et cetera.
But I am sure it will be limiting, it will be restricting, and we will have a certain number of applicants that will be supported, and this number will be very small. So the best is to go through the idea of cost reduction, because cost reduction - we have the rationale for it and it was accepted by the Board. So I think we have to go with this idea, so that we will not restrict - we will not limit the use of this possibility. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Tijani. Let me go back to your, what you mentioned what accounts to a tight criteria versus a broad criteria, I wonder how Cheryl and Evan feel about the tight criteria versus the broad criteria.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I'd like any criteria.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. Both Cheryl and Tijani are right in the sense that this again goes to the idea of why I thought a high level document was necessary to try and figure out what the criteria was before giving the details, you know is it this percent or that percent? Is it this amount of money or that percent of money? Is it this amount of money or that amount of money? That was the level of detail that was coming before the bigger picture issue of how - of - before you know how - we're doing the metrics, before we're figuring out what needs to be measured.
And so I agree with Cheryl, we haven't even nailed down the formula of what an applicant needs in order to be considered for support. But I also to reiterate and fully support what Tijani has said in giving the pushback and saying that doing this in the form of a fund to be administered goes against almost the entire grain of what the JAS group was then trying to do.
It essentially has ICANN totally shirking its responsibility and in fact going against its own recommendations. The GNSO when it first came out with the recommendations for new gTLDs allowed for, and in fact encouraged differential pricing. It has only been ICANN's own processes that have made it go in a one price formula against the recommendations that created the process in the first place.
We need to be reminded of that, and so asking for differential pricing is not going against ICANN policy. In fact, it is firmly along implementing it. So I'm absolutely in agreement with Tijani in saying we need to push back on this concept of an externally administered fund. It is essential - we have to have ICANN to acknowledge itself, that it has a role to play in dropping the barriers, and not enabling some other external body to create a subsidy program. At that point it just becomes another funding agency.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Even though - I'm not sure that we could couple differential pricing with an external funding agent. I don't think it matters what differential pricing is, if it is unattainable by an applicant, then there is going to be at least I thought both ICANN under Resolution 20 and the JAS Work Group (inaudible) at the last African meeting had been focusing on, even going to need a mechanism for establishing support for a needy applicant.
So I'm far less caught up in the one price, be it capitalized or other, higher, or lower, or is it valid or is it not. At the moment, its round, it is what it is. And it's you know the strong arguments that many of us have heard and in fact try to argue again of well you know, perhaps no needy applicant should be supported for the first round. That you know such needy applicants or such applicants who don't have the deep pockets should wait for future rounds and perhaps the pricing will have changes, because experience will have shown what the actual costs will be blah, blah, blah; so based on the presumption that - that we have an agreement on a facilitation and mechanism supported by ICANN and under some criteria, established and agreed by ICANN, the administration of new gTLD processes.
That applicant, who cannot come up with and at the moment the one thing we've established that we'd all agree on is sufficient cash in whatever volume that is, should buy into the program, there should be a mechanism of giving them application support. Whether that’s you know selling (inaudible) out the front of a local bank delayed funds, or whether that's from an internally or externally generated a managed fund, or whether it's from the proceeds of any auctions that happened. I actually think we needn't get quite so concerned with at this stage. That’s the type of thing that Bertrand himself proposed, why the community discussion can knuckle out and work on quite effectively.
What we do need to get the Work Group to do, and in a timely manner now, is establish you know what is the criteria? Is having two-thirds of the insert whatever number, let's call it X of the applicant C plus one-fifth of insert another thing, let's call it Y where the cost of Y is the currently required amount of financial backing to run a registry for one, two or three years, pick a number it doesn't matter.
But it's that sort of formula set of criteria which sounds like minutia but it doesn't actually matter whether we're talking 185,000 buy in or 25,000 buy in, it's a percentage of the application fee. It's a percentage or proportion of the amount of money required to run a registry for this amount of time, blah, blah, blah, or an alternative.
It's those sorts of discussions which the Work Group has had on a number of occasions, which as far as I can see, we haven't established - captured, sorry, first of all, enough detail on, and established any form of consensus, general feelings, lack of consensus, you know primary agreement or lesser agreement on. And I note that you've typed in that Avery is gone. Yes, Avery is gone, now, the work that her group and she produced before she was gone is not readily accessible and that is an administration disaster for this Work Group.
Evan Leibovitch: Avery had - there was no group, I don't know what you're talking about Cheryl, and I have to absolutely disagree with you on almost everything you said.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, there you go. Avery produced in a number of meetings reports including detail on the way other funded and funding bodies did an end of systems thing, other types of NGO and NGO complexes. We discussed all sorts of A bodies and other things. None of that material has been captured. That happens to be work then wasted I think that is - well, bordering on criminal, but certainly mismanaged in terms of Work Group activity. And she I thought at least one other who has recently joined, and whatever reason he and Elaine were two of, there might have been more in the Work Group that was discussing, that was looking at that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you Cheryl, Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, thank you. Avery is sharing or was sharing a work team, and she produced a few - very little, very light thing which is now on the Wiki page and subgroups or something like this. But I think that it's the drafting group that - the drafting team didn't use it now, because we decided that we would begin with the criteria, which is more urgent, and they are working on the criteria right now. And I think they will - they will continue and work and take it and develop it, and I wonder if there is people in the working group that will continue to work on this - on this aspect of the report.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: If they're working on criteria, I do hope that they come up with them quick enough for it to be included.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Is there any evidence that they're working on the criteria?
Evan Leibovitch: Pardon?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Work Group.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Tijani.
Evan Leibovitch: Then I've been wasting my time.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: No, no, no. The whole work of the draft team is almost on the criteria only now, is focusing now, and they didn't finish the report, it's not finished, it's far from being finished. We have to cover all the items - all the missions and the Charter, and now we are working on A and B only.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so when do you expect Tijani that this criteria will be on the Wiki somewhere in a readable way?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: I am not the only who decide. I always give my point of view, my comments, and the drafting team is working and I know that they are working, because I am very often in contact with Cintra, especially because she want to know why I disagree with the things, so she want to understand. And she always gives me alternative wording, et cetera. So they are working, and they are working hard. I think that for the criteria, we have to finish before 7, it's clear, we had this deadline, and we have to finish before the 7th.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So we agreed that there needed to be (crosstalk) of criteria. We've established this already. Yes, Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Olivier, please, we agreed inside the working group that we will work on the criteria, and we will give the Board at least a report on the criteria, at least this, because it is the main thing, because without those criteria, the Board will not agree to give any support. So we decided inside the group, that we have to do it before 7 of May. And I think we have the - the obligation to do it before 7 of May.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, it would certainly be good to see a Wiki page specifically on the criteria, so as for others to see how that is progressing.
Evan Leibovitch: Well, if the current Wiki page doesn't have criteria on it, what does it have? You know the -
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, on the criteria. It's on the criteria.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Why, when, who what, how?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Ah yes, it's an introduction. You are right, the working group wanted that - the people who doesn't know anything about our group, understand what we are doing. That's why they give this introduction; the two first parts are absolutely introduction. The third part is the main, is the main part.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So part three, which is one paragraph there, it tells us all of the criteria that is required for an applicant.
Tijani Ben-Jemaa: And then we would go to the process, to the matrix, to the mechanisms - this is put forth.
Evan Leibovitch: Olivier, hold on. You’re saying this is one paragraph?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, sorry, one paragraph with its sub-paragraphs. It’s very text heavy. It’s going to be very difficult to read this if you don’t have an actual list of things and have it done in a way which is a proper board or something, a table which would give you these things, maybe.
Tijani Ben-Jemaa: Olivier, we have - Dev is working on flowcharts and everything will be very clear.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, what does an applicant…
[simultaneous conversations]
Tijani Ben-Jemaa: To do the flowchart chart, we have to finish part four. I’m finished now.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, the question I had was what do an applicant need to bring into… Just like what Cheryl has said. There are more things than just a financial need or application, mission and things like that. I can see it’s taking shape but it still needs a lot of work on that.
I wanted to take an issue, actually, with the discussion on the stuff that Evan has told us on the cost reduction, rather than having an external fund. The concern that I is that if one advocates the cost reduction part, which so far as I’m concerned, I’ve only heard Peter Dengate Thrush say, “Oh, yes, we would be ready to look at this.”
But I haven’t seen any concrete evidence that the Board would be looking at having an actual cost reduction in the Applicant Guidebook. Would that not be a big change to the Applicant Guidebook if there was a cost reduction included in it?
Evan Leibovitch: No, the way to do that in parallel, essentially the Applicant Guidebook says, “Here’s how you apply for a domain and here’s the cost of the domain.” You could have a parallel document saying that for some small sub-set of the applicants that meets the following criteria, the following benefits will accrue.
And one of the benefits is some kind of either a rebate or an exception applied. It doesn’t have to affect the application document, but at the same time, can offer a cost reduction.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: But that’s an addendum that you’re looking at, an addendum to the document.
Evan Leibovitch: Yes, without going into the document itself.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Is that what you were going to say, Tijani?
Tijani Ben-Jemaa: Yes. I would like to say that inside the doc there must be a mention of the support for certain applicants and that this will be dealt with through a document that will be appended or that will be an addendum to the document. This is the first thing.
The second thing - it is, Bertrand said that the idea of a fund is especially and essentially raised because ICANN doesn’t want to have something which is not certain, which is not sure, which is not an exact amount.
So they don’t want to deal with something which is moving, which is not defined. That’s why the idea of the fund was raised. I understood it like this. They told me that it is better for ICANN to deal with an amount, not with a cost reduction which ICANN cannot know at which extent it can go.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: You see, Tijani, the problem is that there is a problem as far as predictability is concerned. If 100% of the applicants apply for applicant support, the whole windfall that will come from the applications is going to be way lower if they all receive applicant support than what they’ve been designing.
And that skews the whole ICANN model up financially speaking; it might even pull the company down. What is the percentage of applicants that are going to be accepted as with applicant support? If all of the applications come through, did they all receive applicant support?
Tijani Ben-Jemaa: No, they didn’t. All is in the criteria. We said that the main and the compulsory criteria is the need. And they told us how to know who is needy. And we are working now on this particular point. We try to give mechanisms to give metrics, do define who is needy. And I don’t think 100% are needy.
Plus, when you are needy, you have to try at least one or more other criteria that are listed in my report and are now reminding in this report. So it is not reasonable to say 100% will apply for support. So I understand that ICANN cannot deal with something which is not certain or really defined.
But if we decide to go with the fund, I am really uncomfortable because any percentage or any amount you put can be not enough or can be an amount that would not be used. So it is arbitrary and I hate to work with arbitrary.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, you call that arbitrary; I mean some will call it predictable. If ICANN is able to say that, let’s say, 10% of all the money coming in from the application process will go towards a fund, at least they can budget this in advance and they’ll know how much that will cost.
I guess if that amount is large enough, and I would imagine that 10% is pretty high when you look at the numbers that are involved, that might always… Do you have an objection - if the fund was large enough to be able to fund any application support that comes through. I’m not saying no matter how many applications comes through, but I’m saying that there’s going to be more money in the kitty than the number of applications coming through.
Tijani Ben-Jemaa: Olivier, let me tell you that the proposal at first was 1%, then 2%. So if it gets 10%, we can discuss. But I don’t think they will go this way. I did the calculation and I told them, “Bertrand, this is nothing.”
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I agree with you. One percent and two percent is a joke. We have to work out some numbers like 10%. Any comments from Cheryl, Evan?
Evan Leibovitch: Look, my point of view is known. I’m fundamentally opposed to the concept of a pool and believe that ICANN is basically shucking off its responsibility to a process that it has no expertise in. ICANN, to me, has a responsibility to reduce the barriers to applicants that meet the criteria. It’s as simple as that.
And that ICANN has a choice to do it or not do it. They also have a choice to listen to the public interest when it comes to the DAG itself. They haven’t done that. That hasn’t meant that we watered down our proposal just to give them something that they like.
We’re here to advance the public interest. The public interest is met by giving real support to applicants, partly financial and partly non-financial. One of the things that’s been ignored here is that out of the shopping list of things, for instance, that may be given to people that meet the criteria are non-financial issues that may have direct financial impact.
For instance, the IDN requirement might be reduced or deferred for an applicant that meets the criteria. That’s not an out-of-pocket expense for the application right now, but it has a very, very real implementation expense issue that could be of benefit. If a needy applicant doesn’t require IDNs, then forcing them to have IDN support or anything like that.
I’m using just one example. There’s a number of other things that have been recognized of non-financial changes that could be enabled for applicants. So dwelling on the fund to me, fundamentally, either ignores, defers or goes into willful oblivion over the fact that the need of the applicant, 1) is not an issue of charity and 2) is not totally a matter of direct financial subsidy. Anyway, I’m repeating myself…
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I know, I know. Even if the panel was a multi-lingual panel that was composed of ALAC and other groups within ICANN, rather than having outside experts, which we all hated to have.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We’ve got the horse and the cart in the wrong order again, guys.
Evan Leibovitch: Welcome to the JAS Group. It’s always been about putting the…
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: You know what, Evan, I actually thought I was on this JAS Group from the very beginning, but perhaps I was wrong.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Cheryl, Evan, I’m just trying to establish whether… We don’t seem to even have consensus on this in this call. Some of us think that a fund is better; some of us think that the cost reduction is better. So really, what the group is going to have is to write a report that reflects the fact that no consensus has been reached on some of these points, the fact that we are going… I think that we do have consensus on that though - the dealing (inaudible) of the DAG process with the group’s findings, having it as a parallel process so that will put less pressure on it.
I think that’s some of the AIs which Evan has come up with - the decoupling of the work and certainly the possible meeting in Singapore is something that holds some worth. I mean Cheryl, Tijani, what do you think about the meeting in Singapore?
Tijani Ben-Jemaa: I think it’s a good thing.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, I think it’s a good thing, too. If the Work Group has done any of its output for them to build a discussion on, it’ll be great.
Tijani Ben-Jemaa: And it depends on the agenda of the meeting, but generally it’s a good thing.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: But at the moment the Work Group and indeed the chartering organizations can’t even suggest that. Well, we can suggest it but you know, who’s going to listen – the Board and the meeting planners? Well only if they’ve got something to work from.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so various action items. The first one I gather is that the Wiki has to be sorted out so that all the information in the history of what’s happened so far is put on there. I gather is Karla going to be able to do this?
Evan Leibovitch: On the particular Wiki document that’s up there? The one that’s intended to reflect a summary of what the Group is doing.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so that’s-
Evan Leibovitch: So that’s really to run a summary back into a compendium of everything that’s been done. Let me get that straight.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, excellent.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Have you… Hang on, Olivier, hang on Olivier. That document that, yeah, the Wiki document that is the summary document with the bits of red text along there with the “things need to happen here” stuff, that is not part of the Wiki record that needs to be brought up to date. That’s the document that the Work Group needs to focus on now. What also needs to be brought up to date is the appalling record of everything that everyone’s ever reported since the milestone reporting at least, in any iteration given the (inaudible) but that’s another thing.
This document, we need to have this document onscreen with the backend stuff that supports it also accessible by the whole Work Group. But we’re still hearing that until, some of the things for example that everything in the past fora have been documented, put to bed, and one would have thought you know, consensus to some degree established; then the flowcharts can’t be completed and yet the flowcharts, if we saw the flowcharts may help the Work Group crystallize and develop some output that we desperately need to do in a very short period of time.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so Seth, have you written this down please as an AI so we know how to….
Seth Greene: Yes, thanks Olivier, but if I can just take a second and confirm. So there’s actually two AIs, is that right? First the actual JAS Work Group Wiki to be sorted out so it includes the history of what’s happened up until now and that’s basically for Karla to do? And the second one is that in future meetings the summary Wiki document, the high-level document needs to be the focus and that’s obviously something that the Work Group itself needs to do. Is that correct?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: That the Chairs will need to do.
Seth Greene: The Chairs, yeah. Thank you, Olivier.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And perhaps as a follow-up for all of us, maybe we can put our minds down to writing perhaps a schedule of works for the next JAS calls, helping out for the agendas – or do you think we’re interfering in the Chair’s work?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We have to be really careful about micromanaging. I mean (crosstalk) the Board feels they can try and influence us on a one-to-one direction what may very well be their personal thought, not the general feeling of the Board – I don’t know – with a number of the members of the chartering organization who also, or one of the chartering organizations who also serve on the Board. This is a very, very odd way of doing things and it’s not exactly bottom-up consensus building.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, maybe because there’s panic at seeing that bottom-up consensus doesn’t seem to be running very well at the moment – that’s my personal feeling.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Quite possibly, but I’d feel better if it was a note from the Board to the chartering organization than a single member albeit well-intended member of the Board talking off the record to individuals. Because it may be that the Board has…. I don’t know. It may be that the Board has absolutely no intention of committing any sort of time in Singapore to this at all. And yes it would be desirable for it to happen, but this could just be Bertrand’s good idea. I hope not but what if it is?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I think it might be. That’s the thing – I think it might be.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well that’s dangerous ground indeed, and that’s exactly why trying to re-steer a ship when you think there might be something in the way, and in fact it might not be there at all, needs to be very, very carefully looked at. I don’t think we are going to get- Can we give the Chairs of the Work Group some clear guidelines that say “In the next two meetings, regardless of how long those meetings go and maybe gee, they might have to go more than just six (inaudible)…”
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: “They need to go from top to bottom on the text on this, high-level Wiki page text.”
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, action item.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And that omitting this, the map issues and the bits in red clearly needs to be discussed, and the output of those discussions from the Work Group then gets inserted, what is agreed to gets inserted into those places and spaces. And is that a way forward?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I’m happy with that. Evan? Tijani?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, I can add also to this action item that in the two future calls, the one who will lead the discussion on the substance will be Evan and the correction or the modification can be done onsite or perhaps by Karla while we are working so we can go fast.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Evan, you’re okay with that?
Evan Leibovitch: I’ve been okay with that from the beginning. The whole reason for doing this Wiki document was to toss it out there and get feedback so that we could have reasonable consensus from the group at least on these high-level issues. The text that has been read were things that I came across, of questions I believed needed to be answered before the Group could even get into a detailed level. If the Group can at least get consensus on what are the criteria… Like to me this has always been about answering two questions: who can qualify, and if they qualify what do they get? Right?
The first one, “Who can qualify?” is irrelevant of whether it’s cost reduction or fund – let’s figure out who can qualify.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Correct.
Evan Leibovitch Then after you get to that, well, do they qualify for a fund? Do they qualify for cost reduction? Do they qualify for leniency on IDNs? Blah, blah, blah. There’s- We can separate the two questions.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes. Evan-
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: If we can focus on this, on the criteria, at least we’ve got something which we can give. As far as the stuff which we digress on or which we don’t agree on such as whether it’s a fund or whether it’s a cost reduction or whatever, this can then be explained and this could be discussed then in Singapore? Is that possible?
Evan Leibovitch: If we could get no further than nailing down absolute JAS consensus on part 3 of the Wiki that will be a major accomplishment to me.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: And the formula Evan, and the formula.
Evan Leibovitch: Yeah.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, my point is… Oh, I forget.
Evan Leibovitch: Well part 4 is what benefits and that’s where you get into the divergence between the fund and cost reduction.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: No, I mean the mechanisms where you put your formula, this part has to be finished.
Evan Leibovitch: Oh, the formula, okay. That gets put into part 3, so here are the criteria and how do we apply the criteria – that’s still part 3.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, thank you. So for the, what they will get, I mean what kind of support – it’s not part of our charter.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That’s right.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: It was already done, already done in the milestone report so we don’t have to go back to it. It was one of my points at the beginning.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Perfect.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That’s right, Tijani.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Evan, you were about to say?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We do need to add the public/private partnership, we do need to add some of those issues and we do need to address the things that came out of the, the few things that came out of the public comments.
Evan Leibovitch: I won’t repeat myself.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, fine. Then we’ve got a few things that we can give back to the JAS and hopefully they can move forward. Evan, you know what to do on the next call.
Evan Leibovitch: Well I know what to do but again, I’m not a Chair. If there’s dissatisfaction for both the way the meetings have been chaired and part of the AIs are directed to the Chair, a little bit of that is out of my control.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, the first thing because Carlton should be our fifth member, the first thing – we will inform Carlton and hopefully Carlton will be able to Chair the next calls. I’m not sure – is he meant to Chair tomorrow’s call?
Evan Leibovitch: No, he won’t be on the call tomorrow.
Gisella Gruber-White: Hi, this is Gisella, no.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So it will then be Chaired by Rafik then.
Gisella Gruber-White: I have him as apologies for tomorrow.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well it’s another call we risk losing.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: If you want I can send a private email to Rafik and ask him if it’s… I mean they don’t have an agenda set up, do they? So if we have a suggested agenda that we send over and then ask that the agenda in the absence of other agendas to be agreed.
Evan Leibovitch: I am more than happy to and in fact in the past I have held the pen and essentially in real time if the group has consensus on the call I’m capable of changing the Wiki in real time to reflect that. That’s always been my intention; that’s always been what I thought my role was in this.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. Well either of you then propose an agenda to Rafik and carbon copy me and I’ll push it as well.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Olivier, may I suggest that we do as we did in some calls before? That means that the Chair only opens the meeting and give the floor to Evan who will lead the discussion about the substance since he’s the pen holder. And Evan will do everything in this part. Cintra did the same when she was doing this on a previous call.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, the calls Cintra did well, yes.
Evan Leibovitch: Yeah, it’s actually been- Olivier, it’s actually been quite cute and it’s almost been almost a proxy Chair in saying “Okay, for this part of the meeting Rafik gave up Chair to…” it had previously been Cintra or whoever, and that’s perfectly fine. And in fact, Tijani, what I might suggest have happening is work as a tag team with Cintra perhaps chairing the discussion with me in the back working on the text.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: We can ask Karla to modify the text while we are working, but the most important thing is to Chair, Evan. This is how we lost our calls.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So Rafik needs to be aware of that by the way because he’s not just going to turn up and say “What do we do today?” and suddenly “Oh, let’s give the chair to…”
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We only have 24 hours. This is happening in less than 24 hours now.
Gisella Gruber-White: Hi, sorry it’s Gisella.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes Gisella?
Gisella Gruber-White: Just because I try and get the agenda up on the Adobe Connect before the call actually happens, with regards to what’s being said, whoever’s sending the email to Rafik would you just be so kind as to make, to specify what you believe needs to be up in the Adobe Connect so that I don’t have to sit and fiddle tomorrow or Karla to actually get the document up? Does that make sense?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Gisella.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yep, makes sense.
Gisella Gruber-White: Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So who’s going to volunteer for that?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: You.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I’ll tell you why it’s not me. I do not want it to be seen that the Chair of ALAC is interfering with a Working Group that is supposed to be bottom-up. I feel uneasy about this.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, and look what you’re doing – you’re asking the rest of the leadership of ALAC to you know, pick up that gun and shoot it instead. Well you know, in fact what it should be is that as the chartering organization we instruct the Chairs that for output to be in our hands by no later than the 7th of May we believe that the next meeting and possibly the meeting after that needs to focus on the specific text and development of consensus around the text on parts 3 and 4 of the relevant Wiki page; and that we expect to see an agenda that reflects that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, fantastic, I’ve noted it down. I will then email that over to Rafik and to Carlton.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Good.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, I think that’s the way to do it. Yeah, and copies to the staff support who are doing it.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Do I need to carbon copy the GNSO as well?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, due to the timeline and etc., ALAC thinks etc., etc. I think that it’s a good thing.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Is there an opportunity, Evan, for some of the material out of the longer, more extensive document to be made available as background and/or preparatory material for the Work Group people? Because a lot of what they’re likely to go off and discuss has been, well certainly raised if not completely dealt with in that substantive document. Or are you uncomfortable doing that? And I’m asking you as the only representative of (crosstalk).
Evan Leibovitch: I’m not at all… I have no problem with the earlier request to ask Karla to put everything possible up in the Wiki space. I have no problem with that. My problem or at least my difficulty has been trying to actually incorporate that into something sufficiently high-level in that so far what I’ve seen in most of that has been really, really low-level detail, you know, giving background to how a fund would work before we even establish that a fund is a good idea.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think we’re going to have to end up going both ways. I think we’re going to have to have your high-level stuff that says “If this happens then an example of the considerations that need to be looked at is…” insert the example from your more intense documentation.
Evan Leibovitch: Sure.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Otherwise both questions are still going to be asked and discussed anyway.
Evan Leibovitch: Understood. I must say though I’m a little surprised and somewhat disappointed that there’s not consensus in this Executive Committee for the concept of lowering prices.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I know Evan that you mentioned this on the chat just now. I see the Board having a major problem in accepting a fee reduction with no way to predict how much income that will reduce their overall turnover by.
Evan Leibovitch: No, that’s not what I asked. I understand why the Board has a pushback on it; I’m surprised that the Executive Committee has a pushback on it.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I have not finished my sentence, Evan. And because I see the Board not accepting that I see the Board being able to say “No, that doesn’t stand,” and basically just putting the whole JAS in the bin – an outright “No.” I’m trying to find a way for something which will actually be listened to rather than something that we write and that is just going to be put aside because it’s totally unreal.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: In other words, not go through a lip service exercise which is certainly one real risk; and the other one is “Well, it’s too hard this time. We will simply think about application support for anyone declaring themselves or otherwise as needy in the next round.”
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And that will therefore completely shut out any application support for the first round, and that probably is a worse solution than anything else I can think of.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Tijani?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you. I don’t think that it’s a big problem because the concern of the Board is the time and the change in the DAG. So if we propose not to change the DAG, only put a mention of the para-process and you continue working, we can also continue to advocate for cost reduction. However the problem-
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: This is why I was going to suggest, Tijani, I’m sorry for cutting you off but I was just going to suggest on this point we would keep the door open to saying both the cost reduction and the possibility of an external fund have not been… There’s been no consensus on this. This is a subject that we actually would like to see being discussed in Singapore and specifically having the cost reduction in there. I want to see a table with Board members, with ALAC, with other constituencies where the cost reduction is discussed because so far I haven’t seen that real discussion take place.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Is that something which-
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I doubt that will happen in Singapore.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: You doubt it will happen?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Absolutely. Yep, and to be honest, if I was sitting on the Board I wouldn’t let it happen either. I would go for the “Let’s worry about support in the second round” argument. That would be the responsible thing to do from a corporate perspective.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, well so we’ve got no consensus on this but we do have a few action items. Do we need to discuss anything else? It is 27 minutes past our stopping time.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Olivier, we said that we have consensus to put this process as a para-process to the DAG. We didn’t write it as an action item, right? A recommendation.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Right, well we a the ExCom has consensus but obviously the group has to have consensus on that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah. Yeah, we’re not the group.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So that is something which we might need to ask during the call. But the only problem that I see with that is that we’ll be discussing process again.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, no – I wouldn’t even go there, I wouldn’t go there. And to be honest, the Work Group and indeed the chartering organizations might think it’s a good idea and might agree that it’s a good idea but it’s not up to us to do it anyway. No, I wouldn’t go down that pathway.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: If it must be discussed in the Working Group it will be in the “any other business” at the end of the call so that we can work in the beginning of the call on the substance.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We’re not going to finish- Tijani, we’re not going to finish the content in the one call, and it’s (crosstalk) before the second call if not the third call we’re going to just complete our purposes yet again.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yep. Now in previous cross-constituency groups where there was a very tough deadline there was a case of having one call every day or every other day, increasing the number of calls. Do you think that’s something that would be required and is this something that we could suggest?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If the Group itself goes down that pathway, great. But to be honest, most people who’ve been in this Work Group for the long haul are so close to sitting there dummy you start saying “Let’s do it every day” and they’ll go “Fine, we’re out of here.” And that probably includes Evan and I.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: It’s only question whether you want it or not, but okay so “No” is the answer I gather.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The Work Group may come to that, that’s fine. But I don’t think we can prescribe that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And I see that Evan is uneasy about making recommendations based upon what the Board is likely to do, okay. Well look, we have a roadmap for what we’re going to do in those calls that are remaining. We know what’s required so now really it’s down to getting it done. And if we’re going to have a parallel process to the DAG it looks as though this report which will be given on the7th of May, which we should have in our hands on the 7th so as to be able to transmit it to the Board is probably going to be some kind of interim report I guess. It’s probably not going to be the last time we hear of this subject, is it?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Olivier, it will be the reply to the Board on a particular point, because the Board-
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Basically the charter.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yeah, exactly.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The parts of the charter that answer the Board’s questions.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Second milestone report says Evan.
Evan Leibovitch: Well, I’m just thinking well, one of the things that perhaps we should be adding into the high-level Wiki is ensuring that we have in this document the concept that this is a parallel process to the DAG and does not replace or change it.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well you haven’t got consensus on that yet.
Evan Leibovitch: No, but if we did-
Tijani Ben Jemaa: And in the milestone report, there was a consensus on it. It is in the milestone report.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. Well Tijani and Cintra are our experts on the milestone report so I would defer to them.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, if it’s in there that’s fine.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: We said in the milestone report that it will be a parallel process.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. Anything else that we need to discuss now or can we, do we have enough now to move forward with?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, just one other thing if I may, Olivier. Can I suggest that we make it clear to the Work Group that, via their Chairs, that what we need from them pre-May 7th is the substantive consensus outcome on the parts of their charter – insert brackets and close brackets charters, but certainly our charter – that respond to the immediate questions still pending in the Board/GAC deliberations and the questions on criteria from the Board. And that also allows them to focus down onto not trying to complete the whole of their second charter but the really, really (inaudible) important part.
Then they’re going to see that they need to continue to mop up the residual stuff of the charter; that fits into it being a second milestone report with the subtext under the title “Second Milestone Report,” continues “This second milestone report addresses the following particular issues from the charter created on/at” insert the you know, ALAC and GNSO charter, “being this and this and this.”
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, well I guess this is being recorded so I’ll speak with Seth afterwards and we’ll try and add something to that. And I can see that Evan has also mentioned here “Is there an action item to back the part that indicates support for the Singapore meeting to ask for its help in getting Board participation?” Is there consensus on this?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I’d be really careful there because if an already-busy and frustrated Work Group gets wind of the likelihood that all their work is either going to be for naught, contribute little or is going to be re-chewed over by a group of people where they may in fact not even be in the room we’re not going to get the output from them.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So I think that we should really let the Board work on that themselves; if they’re going to have support, going to do this then they should officially get in touch with us and then we would take it from there. But perhaps after May the 7th.
Evan Leibovitch: But that still means-
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Darling, right now we need to come through with what we said we do our best to do, and that’s (crosstalk) output of the Working Group on the criteria issues.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Exactly, exactly.
Evan Leibovitch: There’s going to be a meeting in Singapore, somebody at least needs to – even if it’s not an official action item – quietly get back to Bertrand, say “This is a good idea – can you help move that forward at the Board level?”
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: That can be done unofficially.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The French connection can deal with that.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay.
Evan Leibovitch: Well actually I’m sort of hoping that the Board participants are going to be Bertrand and Katim and possibly Seth.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Hopefully but that’s still a distance away. First things first we’ve got this thing to produce. I must say I feel a lot better now than at the beginning of this call with regards to where the JAS Group is going. I think we do have some direction. Tijani?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, can I ask that all the members of this call during the next call of the JAS put emphasis on the fact that we have to be first relevant with the milestone report and second, stick to the charter? So that we will not have this endless discussion during the calls about the charter, about the milestone report, etc.
Evan Leibovitch: Tijani, that’s an instruction to the Chairs of the group. I mean we’re still- Go ahead.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah (crosstalk), you know how many times many of us – as in the people on this call who at time have said it… I mean I may as well just have it recorded and just input into each meeting.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: And Evan, I commit to send you a comment on what is now on the Wiki page before the call so that you can use it during the next call.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Right. I think we’ve pretty much beaten the subject to the ground now. We’ve got a number of action items. I will be working with Seth. Seth, are you available in the next few hours for us to work on a text to send to the Chairs?
Seth Greene: Yes, absolutely.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so we’ll work together-
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If I may, I know I’m teaching my grandmother to suck eggs here but just to remind ourselves that the reason you’re writing to the JAS Work Group Chairs is of course an outcome of the full ALAC meeting, not just this Executive Committee.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Good.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Good point.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yeah.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: There certainly is concern. So okay fine. Well thank you very much for this extraordinary call, extraordinary by the fact that it’s not something that we usually do very often thankfully, but I think it has been productive and I hope that you find it productive as well. And you should receive something…. Now what I’ll do is I’ll pass it by the ExCom before emailing it over to Rafik, and-
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well don’t await my response – just do it if everyone else is comfortable with it. I mean I give up most of the, you know, almost every Friday night so long as I care to remind you at either midnight or 11pm as well as the mid-week for these JAS calls, so I feel like this is really more of my life given to just this issue than I gave to big hunks of ICANN while I was chairing ALAC. This is just taking a ridiculous amount of time with a minimal amount of productivity outcome. There’s a lot of work being done and it’s not diminishing the stuff that’s happening in the work teams and the drafting team at all – we’re just not getting far enough here, an that’s poor, and I mean really poor work group leadership.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well hopefully this can be saved somehow.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (Crosstalk) again. We have to pull on the chain a lot faster and a lot earlier in the future.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. Well thank you very much. Tijani, your hand is still up or have you finished?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: No, no – it’s a mistake. Sorry.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. Well thanks for attending and as I said I’ll follow up with Seth right after this call. Thank you and good-bye.
[End of Transcript]
