Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay good morning, good afternoon and good evening. This is an Ad Hoc conference call between some members of the ALAC with some members of the registrar’s constituency to follow up on a very productive meeting which we had over in San Francisco. And I think the first thing we will do is a quick roll call so that we know who is here. And then I will come up with a bit of background as to where we have been and where we are hopefully are going to go. Is that okay with everyone?
Alan Greenberg: That would be great.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay so we will start with a roll and Marilyn do you want to do the roll call or shall I do it?
Marilyn Vernon: I can do it if you like.
Male: Please go ahead.
Marilyn Vernon: On the call we have Alan Greenberg, Cheryl-Langdon Orr, Sandra and Statton – sorry I don’t know the first name. We have Mason Cole and is there anyone else that I missed?
Alan Greenberg: Michelli is on our call.
Male: So Sandra Hoferichter, and Michelli and who did we have? And Statton Hammock as well and Mason Cole.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Well without further delays we will start a little bit with some background. We had a great meeting with the registrars over in San Francisco. And a number of action items came out from Mason’s list and also on our ALAC list. And those are actually given in the agenda. This call that we are having is very informal. Originally I think it may have just come from the idea of having Michelli and Statton speaking to me about how we thought we were going to be able to work together.
We as being the Registrars and ALAC in order to expand some collaboration. I thought it would be a good idea to have all of the people who got involved in the discussion and dialog in San Francisco to speak again on a smaller group, a more intimate group. But at the same time to be able to really exchange wealth between us.
That’s the way I see the call. Is there anybody who wishes to start. I was going to basically hand over to either Mason or to Statton, if you wish to?
Mason Cole: Olivier this is Mason. If I may?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Please.
Mason Cole: I agree with your agenda. I asked in the Registrar’s group for a couple of volunteers to take this on specifically to follow up on the items we agreed to in San Francisco because there are not enough hours in the day for all of us to do that. Statton and Michelli generously stepped up and said they would do that.
In my role as Chair, I'm happy to agree that this is the agenda we should be working. But I will defer to my colleagues in terms of organizing our work going to forward. And I will turn the floor over to the two of them. And I will jump in whenever I feel necessary.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay Mason, thank you. Who wants to lead on that? First, one thing I perhaps would like to hear is a little bit of the Registrar’s view on how we could work on this. And then start the dialog with the ALAC action items.
Statton Hammock: Okay well this is Statton. I think maybe what i would like to start with was some questions around who we think the audience is for these materials and what kind of information we think is important to convey to the audience. Again this is a call to talk about preparing some educational materials for consumers to give them a better understanding of domain name registration services, maybe the system and how it works and what their responsibilities are or what they need to do.
That was my sense from the meeting we had in San Francisco. Just to drill down a little bit, I think we need to talk about who the audience is. Is it just the person who is going online and surfing for general information? Is it somebody specific? Maybe somebody who is a small business person or just an individual?
I think we need to think about who our audience should be whether the educational materials should be broad or narrow in scope based on that. And then talk about what information would be useful. And maybe that’s not all in one call but that’s in my mind where we might all start.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you and for the record, Statton that is a great place to start. And in my particular bias is to agree that we need to treat some of those groups you mentioned differently. I think the small business end of the spectrum probably needs a slightly different approach from their education materials than the individual domain name registrant as parental registrant who just has been blindly going on not understanding what the difference is between who is hosting what and what happens when their name suddenly comes up for renewal and that sort of thing.
But also particularly with the view to the new gTLDs and the brave new world we are all about to head into, I know from an APRALO point of view, we fear for our ability to education in the 53 different languages. Let alone that most of those will be using IBM scripts of the basics on what it's all about. It's almost a multilayered approach where we would have a bunch of call basic information we need everyone to know.
And then i would suspect - this is all just my personal view - tease it out to specifics that would interest particular groups, thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Cheryl, it's a very good point. Statton where do we go from here? You started with who is our audience.
Mason Cole: Yes, let me –
(Crosstalk)
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I agree with Cheryl’s point of view on that.
Statton Hammock: I do agree with Cheryl that when I mentioned categories of people, I mean that there are different categories. But maybe we shouldn’t try to tackle all the different conceivable different persons that would be interested and really try to make it as general as possible to give benefit to the broadest number of individuals or groups or people.
When we fashion our educational materials I think maybe we should just think of the person who hasn’t registered a domain name before and what they think they need to know before they enter into the processes of obtaining registration.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you –
Statton Hammock: Maybe one other thing I should’ve asked at the beginning is I can't recall during the meeting where the idea for us get to together and talk about education material to disseminate originated? Did it come from a need that you guys were hearing from people that you were talking to that says “ I don’t know about X. How do I find out about X?” and that would useful to know too because then we can start really brainstorming what people have requested or what the need is and then we can respond.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Statton. If I can just say from my point of view, I just jumped onto the ship as it was already sailing. I gather there was a demand – there certainly is a demand for potential registrants to be able to know more both about the industry and a place to answer all their questions and so on. Alan has been on this for a long time so perhaps Alan you would like to say?
Alan Greenberg: Yes a couple of things, when Cheryl gave her answer, my inclination was to hang up the phone quickly and run away.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That often happens between you and me Alan.
Alan Greenberg: What she was describing was a nice long term goal, but it's a long term goal. I think one of the cardinal rules we need to follow is let's start simple and not be overly ambitious and as we accomplish things tick them off and go on to greener fields. I like Statton’s idea of let's pick a target and see what we can do in one language and then go on from there. I think over ambition will guarantee that we will not succeed.
In answer to the last question of where did the question come from, I don’t think it's ever not been there. When I joined ICANN four and half years ago, one of the first things I heard about was a primer that had been written on domain name registration which the ALAC was very unhappy with because of how it was written and the slant it had. But that notwithstanding and it seems to come up on a regular basis every time we talk about problems with domain name registrations, somebody be it a registrar or user side says there is really no where they can go to find out.
How can we really expect people to understand these things? Most of what you find is unintelligible or worse is essentially paid advertising which doesn’t necessarily give you a clean view of things. We've seen a few examples of other countries where they have tried to do something to educate prospective registrants, get them information or who you deal with and why are these good registrars and bad registrars. And that is one aspect that is looked at in some places.
I don’t think the answer is ever not there. Certainly if you look Pedner from day one it was something that everyone agrees on that if only we had good education material, we may be able to avoid some of these problems.
Statton Hammock: Alan that’s great and that’s helpful. One thing you mentioned that I was particularly interested in hearing more about if you had more to add was you said, when you kind of dipped your toe in the ICANN world there was a primer on domain name registration. But that wasn’t very either useful or satisfactory or whatever it was. Do you remember what that primer was? Who put it out?
Alan Greenberg: I think we eventually published it a year or so ago, Cheryl might have a better memory than I. it was written by a staff member. People didn’t like the slant of it. It was too focused on gTLDs if I remember correctly. And I think it underwent some revision and may eventually have gotten published and then disappeared. But I don’t remember –
Statton Hammock: Is this an ICANN publication?
Alan Greenberg: It was done through ICANN, through At-Large. Cheryl do you recall?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep.
Alan Greenberg: Okay I will stop talking.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Perhaps what we have is an actual item to try and trace this and find it so that we can share it and have a look at what it is?
Statton Hammock: That would be my suggestion because maybe we can improve upon what skeleton is there instead of having to reinvent the wheel.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Statton and sorry Sandra, just to respond to Statton’s issue, it is another piece of paper. I don’t know how many potential domain name registrants feel that they should find out about ICANN and then find out about ALAC and then find out about the fact that At-Large has an existing publication in paper somewhere in Marina Del Rey. But I think you see where I'm heading.
Alan Greenberg: But did we ever finalizing it to the extent that ALAC was happy to let it go out?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Sorry I'm laughing at registrants don’t giving a damn. You're a very bright man Michelli. As far as I can remember it was ready to go out but it has taken a couple of more into something slightly different than it was in the beginning.
Alan Greenberg: Statton I think the answer is we can probably find it. Over the years there has been enough dissatisfaction that I'm not sure we want to use it as the base but it's probably worthwhile finding. It probably ended up as a PDF however, somewhere. I'm sure there was no web tutorial.
Statton Hammock: Right even if we discard it, in whole cloth at least it would be something I would like to take a look at personally. One comment that Cheryl raised which I think is good, is about what is our medium for delivering whatever it is that we come up with. That can also help frame the information that we provide. Is it the group’s belief that a little 10 page primer that you can hand out, really isn’t what we’re going for? We’re really looking for either a online medium, website, electronic file that is easily distributed and passed along, or I'm just curious to see what we’re thinking about?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Statton before we dig into this, I do realize that Sandra had her hand up for a while. I'm not sure whether she wanted to comment on just what we spoke before or on that, Sandra?
Sandra Hoferichter: Yes, maybe it wasn’t – not on that before – it's still the topic.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Great.
Sandra Hoferichter: The question was raised was which people are we doing this education and what do we want to do? And I think as we are talking as ALAC we should focus on the end user and in my experience I found out just as Michelle mentions they don’t care about ICANN? They don’t even know what it is and I don’t think it's worth that to explain that to a normal end user. What I care about and what is interesting to them is all the upcoming issues, the new gTLDs, DNS and all these things.
And I just posted the link to a video which was produced by [inaudible 00:16:28] Secretariat. And which I use very often and find all of it was very helpful not even through the normal end user but also to an advanced community attending the Summer School of Internet Governance. And just to explain with no words because then you don’t have the language problem, how the internet system, the DNS system or the future issues we will talk about how they work on.
In this regard I found out on the Cartagena meeting the beginner session on the [inaudible 00:17:06] which was moderated and run by the registrar and they made this funny theater play for us. And this was very helpful for a newcomer like I am in the ICANN community to better understand what are the issues and a very cute and very quick [inaudible 00:17:31].
And I think those movies, you can spread them online and they will be used on various websites. I think they are very helpful and the one I just posted here, I don’t know when this one was produced. I'm not sure if it was [inaudible 00:17:50] – actually you did this already.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: So in some way Statton that kind of answers your other question which is in what form this should be produced. It looks as though videos are sometimes a lot easier to access, to understand than having quantities of written material which people usually just wade through. I'm not sure –
Statton Hammock: Yes videos are a great way to reach people. It's visual and audio medium. The only thing there, you're talking about video product and costs. There you are talking about cost. And would require somebody will a skillset to help us do the production. That’s the only challenge. I will say though and this is not to puff my own company, we did do videos on how to do a domain name registration, what's hosting and stuff like that. And perhaps there might be a way, if you guys want to take a look at that, I would show that and see if that is kind of what we were thinking about. Not putting it up as something we would use but as something to take a look at to see if it's kind of what we are thinking. Let the group –
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: That sounds good. Alan has his hand up.
Alan Greenberg: Yes again I think we need to start simple. I think we’re talking about initially a website. Ultimately maybe we’re looking at building what the Windows community calls wizards or things where you ask a bunch of questions and you come up with a concise explanation or description of what they want. I think ultimately what we want to end up with is when someone goes to Google and does a search saying “I want to buy a domain name” or whatever, something like that, that our site comes up as the top of the Google list.
And to be honest if every registrar points to it, it will by default. And I think that’s what our target is. Our target is to get information to people so they don’t have to know anything about ICANN Or anyone else to find it. And then it is understandable enough so if they have never played this game before, we are not using words that confuse them
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Let me just ask a question here because I've heard many times now people don’t care about ICANN. All they care about is registration and how does it work and do they have ownership of the name and et cetera. And I think we all agree on this. Is there a way to have material produced that would not necessarily be held by ICANN or that might be hosted in ICANN but might just be referred to directly from the different registrars out there say you want to have information that everybody agrees about and is neutral, should we say point over to that Frequently Asked Questions document or video or whatever.
Alan Greenberg: I think there is merit in both of those. Having registrars import things and blend it in with their own information that has one level of difficulty, that is things change, they have to do work and there is an opportunity for changing things so that they no longer represent what was in the original document or website. On the other hand, it can flow smoother.
Pointing someone to another site completely, people don’t always push press on links no matter how inviting it is. There is an up and a down side. But I think regardless of how registrars choose to point to it or point to us it, and perhaps the answer is both ways. I think we need something which people can find on their own without having selected a registrar first.
I think we’re going to have to look at multiple avenues for people to discover the information so we can benefit from them knowing what they're doing.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Alan. Well now I see in the chat that Statton asked where did the – what was the [inaudible 00:22:36] from resources that were already out there. I mentioned the neutrality and others also mentioned the aspects of publicizing it around, did you want to add anything?
Statton Hammock: From neutrality do you mean a not ICANN produced thing? Is that what you meant by neutrality? What are peoples thoughts on neutrality?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I will – I thought ICANN was neutral.
Michelli: When we speak of neutral one would think of something coming from a registrar and would be or could be seen as marketing material for that registrar. Well they document from ICANN that would be agreed by the ALAC and by the registrars is something which has both a neutrality aspect and also this whole legitimacy side of it. It's legitimate and it cannot be seen as marketing material because all registrars have the same access to it. And effectively it puts everyone in a clean, level field. Every registrant will have the same answers or should have the same answers. I'm saying [inaudible 00:24:14] just this is more of a brainstorming than anything else.
Statton Hammock: Yes, good. I understand that point that some of the informational materials out there on the web are sponsored by hosting companies or domain name registrars or whatever. And so at the end of the segment, so for these reasons [inaudible 00:24:42] from us. So you're saying we need to take it out of that context. I appreciate that and that makes sense. But at the same – so whose is the neutral party to push this out? Is it the organization? Which is fine. But whose name goes on it at the end of the day?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I saw Sandra had her hand up but Sandra was it to answer this or was it I didn’t see Alan had his hand up, maybe that was to answer.
Alan Greenberg: It was.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, Sandra if it's okay, I will first have Alan.
Sandra Hoferichter: Okay.
Alan Greenberg: In terms of who publishes it it depends on which content we are talking about. I think for the tutorial guidance on what you should know before starting in this kind of thing. I think not only it can be ICANN but it should be ICANN. I think ICANN has a bad rep for not caring about users. That may or may not be true. But I think having this kind of stuff done under the ICANN name is good for ICANN. And ultimately it's viewed as not being in favor of one registrar or another.
There are people who accuse ICANN of favoring registrars over users but they don’t favor a particular registrar. I think it's very clean from that point of view. On the other hand Cheryl gave an example in Australia once of an organization that essentially does ratings of registrars and this is why you want to use these and this is why you don’t want to use these. That I think is a marvelous thing.
And it has to be done by someone who is truly independent and can demonstrate to be an independent. I don’t think it can be ICANN because I don’t think ICANN wants to get into that business of evaluating its various registrars on it's website. I think that would be a good thing but I suspect ICANN wouldn’t. ICANN in the more general sense wouldn’t think that’s a good thing.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: And I suspect the registrars might not think it's a good thing either. It sounds like a divisive thing to start evaluating.
Alan Greenberg: From the point of view of someone who says “I want to register a domain name, who do I go to?” and they find thousands and thousands of alternatives, because from their perspective they cannot tell the difference between a seller and a registrar, not particularly easily and they really don’t know who to go to. And no matter what registrar you pick, you're going to find someone who has websites about how horrible they are and how they fought with them, that’s true for any business.
And a new registrant doesn’t know where to go. I think that kind of consumer information is a good thing. Maybe it doesn’t come from ICANN but I personally think that’s a good thing. And that gives registrars incentive to get on the good list. But I don’t think that’s the subject we are talking about here because on the first order ICANN is not likely to be the group that does that.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Understood, Statton?
Statton Hammock: Yes?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay alright then next we have Sandra.
Sandra Hoferichter: Yes Olivier I have the opinion we are talking about two different issues here. One is education which is [inaudible 00:28:13] from consumer guidelines. [inaudible 00:28:17] register. [inaudible 00:28:20] domain name you will have plenty of material all around the world already. Maybe it's a good idea if ICANN published a general guideline about this issue. But my feeling was that when we had the meeting in San Francisco that we are focusing more on a way to educate people or end user or customer or whatever.
And in this regard I would like to draw your attention to the ALAC initiative, the South American and European Summer School. I posted it already in the chat room. Those Summer Schools are existing [inaudible 00:29:09] five years and we found out if now is the right time to publish a text book which contains general – which has an aesthetic part about general issues, history of ICANN, history of the internet and all that stuff.
And which has a dynamic part in terms of the future development of domain names, et cetera. And still ICANN is involved in publishing educational books because ALAC is a body within ICANN. And the summer school initiatives they are in the [inaudible 00:29:53] initiative because people from South America and from Europe are part of the ALAC and are running the summer schools.
So I think it could be an idea if we flipped those things to see if the consumer guidelines [inaudible 00:30:14] but also don’t for get to make a real textbook about basic internet issues which can be developed in the next year. And I think the registrars would be a good source for knowledge and of course, for money.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you Sandra, Statton?
Statton Hammock: Since we are brainstorming I don’t want to discount Sandra’s suggestion but I think we’re – I thought the conversation was going towards an online resource and not any kind of printed material. Because one, you're not going to get a widespread distribution on that and you’ve got printing costs and things like that. And you cannot update it from time to time. I like the idea of having a textbook on the desk but I don’t think that’s where our thinking is oriented.
And I just want to make sure that I'm not the only one thinking of that. And then I just want to get back to if we do an online there was talk about again, ICANN maybe being not the source of the content we put together, but be the distribution vehicle. And I just wanted to see if that was favored by the group or not? Thanks.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Statton when you mean distribution vehicle do you mean just providing the website? Or do you mean ICANN actively distributing that information?
Statton Hammock: I'm talking about the web host and where the content would reside.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I was imagining this could be stuff that resides on the ICANN pages but is embedded in the registrar’s pages, if they wish to do so.
Statton Hammock: What do you mean in the registrar pages?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Well your website would have a link from there or I don’t know. I see a lot of crosses so I think maybe we can say no to that one.
Michelli: I just [inaudible 00:32:44] for the moment.
Statton Hammock: Well i would disagree too only because what I've heard in San Francisco was that – because I believe I raised it during our meeting that ICANN does have all these educational materials on the site. And what I heard was “Oh yeah but nobody goes there and if you didn’t know ICANN you wouldn’t end up there.” Really what we want to get to is a separate site independent where somebody – this is what I'm thinking hypothetically and if someone has different views, then please share them.
But I'm thinking that you want to be able to get to the person who is going “I want to register a domain name but I don’t know who is a good registrar.” And I'm going to set this aside because we are all going to agree that we are not going to have any kind of comparison information materials between providers.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Well if you wish to have so, you're welcome. We would be very happy but I'm not sure whether you'd like that.
Statton Hammock: No I would not like that. The person is going so I need to register a domain name, how do I do that? What are some of the providers? That kind of a thing. Is that right?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I would say yes. That’s the way I see it as well. Embedded seems to be the word that offended everyone. I will let Alan speak.
Alan Greenberg: As we were speaking I did a few searches for buy a domain name, register a domain name. you get a couple of sponsored ones from domain name companies and then you get the unsponsored ones. And in order I will read, Go Daddy, DomainRegistration.com.au, which I assume is an impartial group Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Nope.
Alan Greenberg: No, okay I happened to look at it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Show me that URL and I will tell you who is.
Alan Greenberg: www.domainregistration.com.au. Here I will put it in the chat.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Can I give the mic to Cheryl in the meantime?
Alan Greenberg: No I wasn’t finished yet.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay.
Alan Greenberg: The bottom line is I can go down the bottom of the first page and I didn’t find ICANN. Yes I know we may have a lot of material on the website. Personally I have never seen it but it may well be there. I would think if we had good enough material ICANN would even buy a sponsored link on Google. To really show off at the top but it shouldn’t be necessary because our material should be popular enough that it would show up at the top. And I think that’s the target.
And there may be a lot of material out there right now but most of it is not unbiased. And if there is any unbiased stuff I'm not sure you can find it. I think that’s the problem we are trying to address.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thanks Alan. Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, I've not answered the question they are just a registrar. One of the things that strikes me in all of this is that we really need to make sure that it is answering the questions about audiences going to seek. And again it might be getting these things in the right order. The material, for example, in the what is out there, the guide to domain names and everything else is all very dry and very formal and it's all very if I have time over coffee one day when I'm thinking about doing a domain name, well yes I might eventually find it and look it up.
But people who approach me and by people I mean my clients, tend to start with the following approach. I've got a business name and an idea and I need an email address attached to it. How do I do that? I don’t want it to be Hotmail. Okay well you're going to need a domain name. there are a whole lot of advantages if you have. Then the spiel goes on. It's sort of taking it from that level of simplicity.
Now these people at the At-Large end of the spectrum want to get to, they don’t even realize that to get their name@whatevername that follows that means to get the whatever follows that, they need to license a domain name. we've got to pick it up from maybe some really, really basics and then let people drill down but still be informative, accurate and friendly. And if they want to get into the full gory details on the webinars, well great, go for it. Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Cheryl you are looking specifically at the domain names for dummies.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes but they are great big books I would buy from Borders before they go belly up and put on the shelf. I'm talking much more about those pieces.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay. Do we all agree that ICANN would be the right location to host this? I saw Michelli wasn’t quite –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I'm not as comfortable with that, Michelli has a hand up.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Michelli.
Michelli: Can you hear me?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: We can indeed.
Mason Cole: Okay, the key difference here and it may be one of semantics for some but it's not for others. ICANN as a neutral third party, should be the publisher of the website. But it should not be within the ICANN.org website. That’s the key thing from my perspective.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Is there a reason for this? Why do you not like it to be?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Because the website is a shocker.
Mason Cole: As somebody who goes to the ICANN website on a very regular basis as do most people on this call, hands up who can actually find the information they are looking for the first time? And by what you're looking for, I don’t mean something like the RAA or the page on transfers.
But trying to find anything beyond one of two of the top level items is next to impossible on that website. That website’s entire usability is well, it's laughable. It should be a separate website published by ICANN, hosted by ICANN but not on ICANN.org or on a subdomain of ICANN.org.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, Michelli in fact, there is a similar conversation which I really call very vaguely I think it might have been in Nairobi that touched on the subject that the ICANN website was such a nightmare. And I recall there was discussion about ICANN hosting a totally separate website that would actually host consumer information and user information rather than having this indescribable bunch of garble and acronyms and stuff about things that people are not interested about at all. But maybe, Alan?
Alan Greenberg: Yeah look the ICANN website is an abortion. It's impossible to find anything, it's not well kept. That’s well understood. Barbara Clay was hired with the prime mandate to fix the bloody website. Clearly that hasn’t happened yet. We don’t have to debate that. But having something hosted on the ICANN website does not mean it has to be that bad.
I would not intend for something to be hosted on the IBM website and hope that people find it via the ICANN home page. I would like to think they could eventually but that the intent would not be that it be locatable via the ICANN hierarchy. But I think there is a lot of value in having it bear the ICANN brand because it someone does a little bit of research it's clear that organization is a subsidiary of Go Daddy or Network Solutions or whatever.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I see Michelli is agreeing with us. Are we all agreeing on the ICANN brand?
Alan Greenberg: Yeah, well I don’t if we are all agreeing. But I think it's crucial, I think it's important to ICANN and I think it's important that users be able to with a little bit of investigation, verify that this is not the sales arm of some organization. Now whether it's ICANN.org or ICANNConsumerInformation.org, we can debate.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I understand that you mentioned, in fact, Barbara Clayton was supposed to be working on this. Perhaps might it be an action item for us to try and find out instead of working in our silo and finding whether they're working in their silo. Because I see there is some understanding and certainly some agreement here for us to work together.
Alan Greenberg: I would doubt if the issue we’re talking about is high on her priority list, getting a website in order, I hope is. And maybe at the next meeting we should actually ask specifically that question, how is it going and when can we expect to see something that isn’t disgusting. And I would phrase it close to that. But I don’t think that’s an issue we need to worry about because I wouldn’t want to expect that people find it through the ICANN website no matter how elegant and easy it is to navigate.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes if what we were doing together was to establish or get ICANN to establish a consumer ICANN website?
Alan Greenberg: Later in the project we can decide whether we need to register a new domain name or not which is what you're saying.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I hear they are expensive.
Alan Greenberg: Once we figure out how to do that, we can discuss that okay? I don’t think it affects the content.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It doesn’t affect the content by I do, for the record and perhaps an action item, Marilyn can you help me, not right now, but by giving this group the name of the lovely lady who I was interviewed by whose job it is to make the new look ICANN website actually effective usable and dare I say it even perhaps meets some of the baseline requirements of usability for W3C compliance. They interviewed me some time ago I know it's a project going on. But it's probably worthwhile just having it for the record and touching base with what they're up to and when.
Marilyn Vernon: Sure Cheryl I will look into that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thanks Marilyn.
Alan Greenberg: I can probably find it quickly, she interviewed me also.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, she would have done most of us I would have thought but that was just a while back.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: In the meantime whist looking at our chat I see there seems to be some kind of consensus that ICANN should be the publisher. And Statton you mentioning we need to focus on how to pull in ICANN, do you want to expand on this?
Statton Hammock: Sure I was just thinking if this becomes something that ICANN will publish well then obviously they would do the laboring or on setting up the website and I'm not talking about the content, which i would hope that they would solicit from the stakeholder groups that would be providing information here. It elevates this sort of out of our two respective groups’ control and really elevates it to ICANN to say “Here, this is a project we think you should do.
It follows some of your mission to be consumer centric. And we know that your website is not really for the consumer, it's for the industry people. And so we would like to see an ICANN published site separate from this, that is directed to the consumer that provides neutral information about basic domain name information and then get ICANN to identify the person who would run on that. That’s sort of how I think it would play out. So that’s what I meant by that comment.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay now you know Statton about how long things take in ICANN?
Statton Hammock: Well yes that would probably take 60 years. That’s the drawback to doing it this way is if we give it to ICANN to do, then God knows how long it will take before we see the finished product.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think we need to own a little bit more in terms of supplier and end user interactive. There are a whole lot of good reasons why it needs to be done and done now, blah-blah.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: We are basically having an agreement on that. I personally think we should really work ourselves on this and if it comes down to ICANN jumping on the ship afterwards then let them do. But it looks as though their ideas – well their attention is taken up elsewhere, at least for the time being. I'm trying to see how we can move forward and get some document and a roadmap maybe together for us to be able to have something out there we just register a domain with ICANN’s agreement of course and start with that first, Version 0.1, Statton?
Statton Hammock: Thank you, I was just thinking the reason why we’re here today is because the registrars wanted to assist in providing information that would be helpful for an educational campaign. For whatever reason it didn’t occur to me until now that why is it just the two of us because the education would extend probably broader than just what registrars would or could provide.
And so I'm thinking registries or security people or whatever and I don’t know if – it's always easier to accomplish more in a quicker amount of time by keeping the working group small. But are we thinking that this would be a larger project after all? That’s more of a question than a comment.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I tell you one thing, I see this a little bit more like building a wall with different bricks. It doesn’t look like the subjects we’re talking about go across. What I mean is the registrars wouldn’t – might not be able to bring so much information about stability and security as the SSR group would be dealing with. And I just wonder whether we could start our wall by working registrars and ALAC together and then maybe bringing in the other groups to bring their bricks to the edifice. And Alan?
Alan Greenberg: Going back to Cheryl’s original answer this is a huge project if we are to do it all. And it's not going to get done all immediately. And it may not be us ultimately. I think it's important to verify where the ICANN website project is as Cheryl has suggested. And verify that they are not working on something like this which I highly doubt they are. But I think the value of us working on it is both of us seem to care and that’s the first requirement.
If we don’t have someone with money to pay for the work to be done, then people who care are likely to be the ones who at least get something started to the point where we can convince others to take it over and put real resources into it.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Alan. We are going to reach the end of this call soon and I wanted to have some takeaways from this call. And certainly it looks as though we do have some progress here. The question is how do we start this? How we get this going? There is a consensus we need a website with information. I'm not sure whether we have answered some of your questions Michelli and Statton? Is there more that you require? We were certainly interested in seeing there is interest on your side.
Statton Hammock: I think I've gotten a couple of key takeaway points that have been helpful for me, one is the thinking is that we would be putting together an online resource separate from the ICANN site, an independently run source perhaps. Also I like the idea of having us look at if we could look at the primer that was discussed earlier. Check with ICANN to see if they have any interest in what we were thinking of or whether there is any aspects of this that are currently underway .
I think that’s important. Those are the things that I took away from this particular call. When it comes to the actual content, at some point we need to decide what information is most useful to convey to the consumer. And once we have that laid out, I'm fairly confident that information can be pulled very quickly because registrars offer some information through their sites to their own customers.
You could take that information and make sure it's not a marketing piece but more a factual base and pull it together relatively quickly. I see content coming together quickly as long as we can get clear on what information we want to convey and how we want to convey it and what the best means to do that is.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: At-Large seems to be quite close to the consumer I guess. And I think we can probably get that information to you as an understatement. I'm sure we can get that information to you and you appear to be close to where the answers are.
Statton Hammock: Precisely which is why this match kind of works. If you know or could easily come up with the kinds of information that you believe that people are thinking and asking questions about and not seeing neutral answers for the lack of a better word, then seeing that list – once we see that list from a registrar perspective I think we could answer a lot of those questions from a registrar perspective in way that, again is stripped of its marketing and get the consumer the basic information.
For the record we are not thinking that this would be information that would compare providers. It would just be information about what registrars do and how the system works and what the expectations are.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Perfect, Alan?
Alan Greenberg: I would just add one thing to that, it's not only the questions that people are asking, it's from the perspective of those who deal with users, what are the questions they're not asking that are perhaps more important? There is a certain amount of ignorance that gets in the way of doing things properly and well and it causes problems down the road. And we have to address those.
They're not always the questions people ask. And perhaps they don’t end up knowing what the answers are. I think it's a little bit wider than knowing what the questions ask but I agree with the overall intent.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay great. Well I think that we have a roadmap here where the first thing is we will identify and find that missing document, get it over to you. And then after that we will take it from there to identify the questions that are being asked by consumers and the questions that are not being asked by consumers. I'm trying to guess what those are or find out what those are and from that point onwards we will look to you for suggested answers.
Statton Hammock: That sounds great, yes.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: What we can do because the facility to do so is we can start a Confluence page on this. And start building it from there, is that something which resounds with everyone?
Statton Hammock: What's a Confluence page?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I'm not sure that the registrars will know what the Confluence page is about.
Statton Hammock: Yes I don’t know what that is.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I'm sorry my mind is polluted with – it's not an acronym actually. It's a community Wiki page which replaced the Social Text Wiki.
Alan Greenberg: It's ICANN’s Wiki of choice this year.
Statton Hammock: And they call it Confluence?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes well it's called Confluence for some reason.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And it's not too shabby come on.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: It's the brand name, there you go. Michelli hates Wikis but that’s all we have been given to play on. Okay we will get a community Wiki page up and we can start building it up from there as a sandbox. And then from that point on we will see if we get a document together.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Now Michelli you can add on your blogs to the Confluence page. It's alright, all that stuff can just be plug and play.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Alright apart from Michelli who doesn’t like Wikis at all. Statton we are on course with that?
Statton Hammock: Yes.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay perfect, any other questions or?
Statton Hammock: My only question is after some of the ALAC folks pull together some of these materials that’s when we will have our meeting I guess and not until then, right? There is no need to have a regular scheduled meeting at this point while we’re pulling things together, do we agree?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I totally agree with you. What I do want to do is get this done pretty fast and hopefully get some movement before Singapore because we have been thinking about it for such a while. And really the first time we get to talk to each other like this, I do think that we have to give this a boost.
There is also another agenda going with consumer rights, et cetera which is another agenda. I don’t want to mix the two together at this very moment because that’s working group and a larger operation that might take a lot more time. But certainly the educational material that we are talking about here is stuff which I think we can achieve a quick win in. And I hope that we do.
Statton Hammock: Great.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, super. It's just five minutes past the hour. I think we covered what we needed to cover today. Unless I see anyone putting their hand up in the next five seconds then I will be able to consider adjourning this meeting. And I think that’s what’s going to happen. Thank very much for joining us Michelli and Statton and thanks to Mason.
Mason Cole: Thank you Olivier, I appreciate it very much.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thanks.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I hope it was helpful for you.
Mason Cole: Yes, indeed.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yep and let's continue working all together. Bye everyone.
[End of Audio]
