Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening everybody. This is the ALAC monthly conference call on Tuesday 17 April 2012. The time is 1409 UTC. And the first thing we have to do is to adopt the agenda and I have to ask if there is any other business or other amendments to the agenda that anyone wish to declare now? In the absence of such changes the agenda is adopted. Oh I see Cheryl has put her hand u, Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you Olivier. If I may I'd like to bring up a very brief point which is to do with Wiki page and a little confusion I'm having and if I'm having it I think others might be as well. But it can be that I'm either under or in the report that would be your call.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I'm sorry I've lost you. In which location? Are we talking about the reports?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It's an issue to with the links from reports pages. So it's [inaudible 00:01:21] coming under reports [inaudible 00:01:23] it's allocated or in any other business.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Well will deal with it then under the reports so that’s it's actually integrated when we speak about the reports. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you for that. We will now proceed with the roll call and apologies.
Gisella Gruber: Welcome to everyone on today's ALAC call on Tuesday 17 April. On today's call we have Dev Anand Teelucksingh, Maureen Hilyard, Oksana Prykhodko, Cintra Sooknanan, Alan Greenberg, Pastor Peters, Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Evan Leibovitch, Ron Sherwood, Jean Jacques Subrenat, Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Rinalia Abdul Rahim, Eduardo Diaz, Carlton Samuels, Yaovi Atohoun, Tijani Ben Jemaa, Titi Akinsanmi, and Ron Sherwood. We have Sergio Salinas Porto on the Spanish channel.
Apologies today noted from Sandra Hoferichter, Christopher Wilkinson, Ganesh Kumar, Julie Hammer, Wolf Ludwig, Jose Arce, and Salanieta Tamanikaiwaimaro. From staff we have Heidi Ullrich, Matt Ashtiani, Silvia Vivanco, and myself, Gisella Gruber. Interpreters today are Sabrina and Veronica on Spanish, Clair and Fernanda on French.
Could I also please remind everyone to state their names when speaking for transcript purposes as well as for the interpreters? And also please do mute the speakers on your computers if you are dialing in with the Adigo bridge, thank you, over to you Olivier.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Gisella and I note that whilst you were listing everyone Ron Sherwood entered the room. I'm not sure whether you have him in the list. Have we forgotten anyone? No okay excellent, so let's proceed forward now with our long agenda today for a call which is likely to last at least an hour and a half. I do note that we are starting about 10 minutes late, please for next month’s call please make sure you do arrive in time.
Some people have been waiting for more than 10 minutes. It's not fair for them to be there in time and us to have to wait for quorum at least. The first thing that we’re going to look at is the review of the ALAC action items from the 43rd ICANN meeting. That was a list which the ExCom has already gone through once in previous occasion, so it's been put somehow - well some of the actions have been put as being completed.
I invite everyone to turn over to the page which is linked to the agenda on the Wiki. And we’ll start immediately with the ALAC and Regional Leadership Working Session 1. Now there is one thing which I do need to mention, not all of the transcripts from all of the meetings have yet been delivered to us. I understand that this in progress. There are several of them that are still not finalized.
What I have noticed is the ALAC and Regional Leadership Working Session 1 which was the Sunday session is 175 pages long. No one can accuse us of not having worked on that Sunday. Let's start with the At-Large working groups and the first action item on there is for myself to ask the Chairs of Advisory Committees and supporting organizations if there is interest in holding an open session on SOPA in Costa Rica.
And then the question being after this action item has been complete. The ALAC is to discuss this briefly with the intent of establishing a working group to draft a statement before Prague. This action item has actually been completed. There has been a request from myself to the SOs and AC Chairs.
There is also a development which has taken place in that traditionally prior to the new gTLD process moving forward the Monday afternoon was taken in ICANN meetings to have a joint SO and AC meeting on specific targeted subjects. And those subjects were subjects brought forward by the community. The afternoon was then taken up in more recent meetings by staff and others explaining the new gTLD application process and discussions specifically centered around the new gTLD process.
What's happened now with this behind us somehow with the application period closing and the whole new gTLD process moving forward, there is time to come back to this. And so there has been a call recently from the Board for subjects from the community to be suggested for a cross community discussion that would take place on the Monday afternoon. I have sent an email to the list. I'm not quite sure; I think there should be somewhere I Wiki page.
I ask if staff could perhaps put a link to that on the Adobe Connect. I have sent a request a few days ago to bring in some subjects. So SOPA and ACTA and these things might be one subject that we wish to ask for. We might also wish to have other types of subjects to be discussed. I know that I think it was Eduardo who already had a look at this page and already filled something in there. I'm just working from memory at the moment. But I do urge you all to look at that Wiki page and add your subjects so that we can get back to the Board as soon as possible.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: There was a moment of silence that’s why I wanted to check.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay Tijani thank you. Well I hope that the moment of silence was not for everyone. I hope you’ve heard what I've said in the past two minutes. I see that staff has not found the Wiki link so far.
Heidi Ullrich: I'm sorry Olivier which Wiki link?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay maybe there was a moment of silence. I mentioned that there was a request from the Board for subjects to be suggested for a cross community SO and AC meeting on Monday afternoon which is something that is now being reinstated. And so I have sent a request to the ALAC working list or maybe the announce list for input from our community to suggest subjects that would be discussed ICANN wide.
A Wiki page does exist about this and I hope that tit will be found before the end of this call. Anyway let's not waste any time on this. Let's move on to the next action item if there is no comment on that. And hopefully by the end of this call we’ll have the link to that Wiki page. The next one is that Sala has asked that the RALO leaders should discuss possibility of grading the dashboard and consistency on how the information is complied.
This I believe will be discussed - this has probably been discussed by the RALOs could someone help me on this perhaps?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you Olivier. Unfortunately Rinalia was unable to attend the APRALO meeting earlier today so I just thought I'd jump in here and mention that it was certainly on our agenda for our today's meeting in APRALO world. But there aren’t any particular action items or outcomes from it as yet. It's almost as if it's a little bit too yeah but no one actually does an AI out of it. I'm wondering if nothing has happened between now and Prague if perhaps it couldn’t be a proposal for the Secretariats meeting’s agenda because it would be good to have uniformity and mechanisms of consistent updates. But it really does fit closes to the edges than to the ALAC.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you very much Cheryl. We have Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you Olivier. For AFRALO we already imported the Google docs to the Wiki. And now we have a Wiki page with that information but we are not [inaudible 00:11:36] dashboard because it's not really a dashboard. It's specific information about ALSs and others that are [inaudible 00:11:47]. We did it with the help of Matt, so thank you Matt. The problem is that [inaudible 00:11:56] are very old. And we will update them shortly I hope so, thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Tijani. Next is Dev.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Alright regarding the dashboards well one of the things discussed during Costa Rica was to update the dashboards to have more metrics for example including membership in the GAC and the territories within the regions and so forth. I hope to have one ready for presentation for Mondays At-Large Improvements call which is next week Monday. That’s it.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you very much Dev. This really is in progress. And we can move to the next action item which is the Registrant Rights and Responsibilities Working Group is consider the issue of the extent of dominance of US registrars in regards to the internationalization of ICANN.
Two points on this, first the consumer cci, so it's the CCI Working Group which looks at the actual Consumer Confidence Working Group has been looking at a number of metrics that it was going to design and prepare for the overall new gTLD process to be able to test it out three years from now, find out if further internationalization of ICANN has taken place thanks to the new gTLD process.
Some of the metrics in there are looking specifically at this. I'm not aware of any developments on the Registrant Rights and Responsibilities Working Group, would anyone be able to speak on that. Is Beau here and if not perhaps Evan?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes we have Cintra on the call and she is the Vice- Chair of the group.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Oh excellent, well Cintra you have the floor.
Cintra Sooknanan: Thank you very much Olivier. Beau and I [inaudible 00:14:34] set up of this group so I need to apologize to everybody for that. We have been speaking to staff and to collating all the documents together so that we can form a cohesive Wiki page for everyone to review and then contribute, but there was that meeting that Beau had in Costa Rica which was just an initial [inaudible 00:14:58].
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you for this update, next is Carlton Samuels.
Carlton Samuels: Thank you Olivier. I just wanted to point out that the question presumed that registrars are a part of ICANN. And it may be necessary to refine the question so that people don’t get the impression that the registrars are creatures of ICANN. Some of us have always been against ICANN determining business model and what might be necessary here is to say to what extent can ICANN encourage more [inaudible 00:16:00] and developing economies. It's not to say that they're part of ICANN thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Carlton. Although we did have a few problems or I had a few problems hearing you at the end due to background noise. Thank you for this update. We will move on to the next action item noting that this item is still in progress as well. Capacity building session, the call for volunteers to take the capacity proposal to the next step is to take place and the regional leaders are to discuss the possibility of updating their dashboards. Now I wonder if we can have an update on this because the capacity building was primarily done by LACRALO and I wondered if we could have someone from LACRALO to speak about this please. I see no one - oh Carlton you have the floor.
Carlton Samuels: Thank you Olivier. Just to make a point of clarification. The capacity building was more generic than LACRALO actually. You recall that Starla was of the view that we should have a capacity building initiative and the issue was whether or not the ICANN Academy was to be the center of all capacity building initiatives. That was one of the questions that was swirling around. But I do believe that this reference was to more than LACRALO. It was a generic capacity building session initiative that Sala was promoting. Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Carlton. That’s a very fair point. I missed part of the capacity building session because I was in another meeting at the time. So it was very hazy in my head and obviously it's very hazy because I wasn’t there. Anyway so would anyone else be able to add on to this. I know that yes you're absolutely correct; the ICANN Academy is one big part of the overall capacity building process.
It was and I guess it could probably mention it briefly here, it was presented during one of the public meetings of the public partnership program and there was a lot of discussion that took place with the other community already. The Academy proposal itself was received I would say generally quite positively by everyone. The next step is now to engage the other communities by sending a letter over to the other supporting organizations and constituencies and stakeholder groups of the GNSO and the ccNSO, etc.
As far as capacity building itself is concerned there was some work also from Sala on an At-Large capacity building program which goes further than the ICANN Academy and aimed at a different audience, aimed at our At-Large structures, aimed at our community whilst the Academy is only aimed at the next leaders of ICANN, the people that have been selected to be the next leaders of ICANN. Anyway I open the floor for further comments. I see Tijani has put his hand up, so Tijani?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay thank you Olivier. Just confirmed that the capacity building was discussed last call and there was an action item to ask Sala to be in contact with [inaudible 00:21:10] about the capacity building included inside the Academy, the whole project of the Academy. I think that we should continue in this way. And anything about capacity building can be developed even apart but inside the whole ICANN Academy project, thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you Tijani. I see also Alan has put his hand up.
Alan Greenberg: Thank you, Olivier you just said the Academy is aimed at ICANN leaders, is that using the term in the sense of true leaders or in the term that ICANN sometimes uses it of anyone who participates in its ACs and SOs and perhaps a slightly larger group of working groups?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Alan.
Alan Greenberg: My understanding it's the latter not the former.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I thought it was people that were selected for leadership positions. I might’ve missed -
Alan Greenberg: You mean like Chairs of committees but not new ALAC or GNSO members?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: People selected by well they're leaders I guess in all of the communities. People selected by the NomCom and people selected by their supporting organization and communities to assume positions of responsibility such as a new At-Large members that are selected to the ALAC.
Alan Greenberg: Okay so you're using leaders in the generic sense that ICANN uses it of any of the main participants in ICANN meetings?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Absolutely yes, thank you for making that -
Alan Greenberg: Okay that's what I was trying to - that’s not the term that leadership, leaders is used in the rest of the world, so thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you Alan. I saw that Sergio had put his hand up a bit earlier; I can't see the hand now. I'm not quite sure what happened. May I just ask if Sergio wishes to say something? And if not then I'll go to Cintra.
Sergio Salinas Porto: Yes Olivier. If I may, I would like to add a [inaudible 00:23:42] when it comes to the capacity building session in relation to the LACRALO General Assembly in Costa Rica. And I would like to say that it was a very good and positive point and we have to make our best efforts to implement this in all the regions because that creates the internal capacity building of our region.
The input on the - the impact this type of training was very important for the discussion of the IRSP, we have two documents. And one which is a joint document issued by LACRALO and this comes out of the understanding that certain topic, so I celebrate this. And I would like to see this multiplied in the different regions, thank you very much.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Sergio for this update. And I also have to congratulate you and your team in LACRALO for having been able to put together a set of capacity building sessions which you didn’t have very much time to put together. But you did extremely well and certainly speaking to many of the delegates that were present in Costa Rica they all thoroughly enjoyed and understood a lot more about ICANN than ever before, which of course reinforces the importance of being able to stage face to face meetings and engage our communities by bringing people face to face. Next is Cintra.
Cintra Sooknanan: Thank you Olivier. I just want to add on Sergio's words. The capacity building sessions, I attended them. They were very attended by the LACRALO attendees. To the extent that the capacity building was separate from the ICANN initiatives we actually were able to utilize quite a bit of the fellowship programs meeting sessions. That also had a positive reflection that whilst many of the capacity building sessions where internal to LACRALO there was also that interface with the fellows to kind of extend knowledge and awareness of ICANN.
I would say also that our specific capacity building session did have the effect of [inaudible 00:26:22] to some extent even though this may been marred by other meetings, thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Cintra. And so looking back at the action item the call for volunteers to take the capacity proposal to the next step is take place - well I understand that Sala was leading on this and Sala - is Sala with us? I don’t believe that she is. I haven't seen her in the list of attendees. Should we just leave this as being in progress for the time being? And we can take this as an important action item we have to follow on right away with Sala. I know that Sala has been travelling. And is now has moved from one region to the other at least temporarily. Tijani?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes thank you Olivier. There was an action item already done I think at the last ExCom meeting saying that Sala is to [inaudible 00:27:39] and connect with Sandra to give capacity building work under Academy. This is the action item. Now normally Sala already had this information and normally she is working with Sandra.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay well neither Sala nor Sandra are here. Thank you for reminding us of this Tijani. What we’ll do then is to the have staff follow up with both via email to make sure that this is actually taking place. And Cintra your hand is up is it new? Okay it has disappeared. Let's move on then to the next thing in the action items and that’s outreach. Staff is to send out a call for membership of the outreach subcommittee to the RALO lists.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes that has not yet been done, primarily because we have been busy putting up other working group calls. Effectively we also wanted to have first an At-Large briefing call with the new Vice President of Global Partnerships. So we’re setting that up and we need to invite all four of those Vice Presidents to that briefing call and then we will have a call for that. Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you very much Heidi. Then the next is for the Secretariats to discuss holding a meeting to review the membership of the outreach subcommittee and the third one being the first call of the outreach subcommittee is to include GP. It's going to be an interesting thing, who could this be?
Heidi Ullrich: That’s Global Partnerships.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay that’s great even I don’t remember some of these acronyms. It is also to discuss interaction and next steps which are to take place within three to six weeks of the close of the Costa Rica meeting. I gather this is all in hand Heidi?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you. Next is the At-Large meeting with the ICANN Board and there are two action items that have come out from there. The first one is for Heidi to forward the dashboard presentation to the Board.
Heidi Ullrich: Not yet be done primarily because I'm not clear on what the dashboard presentation is.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay I'm not 100% sure either. Does anyone wish to step forward perhaps? Right we will have to come back to this. Heidi will check after the call where the dashboard presentation would be. Perhaps if we saw the transcripts there must have been a discussion on the dashboard?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Next one was staff to work together to have a different configuration for ALAC and Board meeting, and I'm happy to say here that we have been contacted by Board support staff and discussing options. It's looks as though that due to the fact that some groups are larger than our group and all wish to sit at the table if there was a horseshoe table they might not be able to accommodate everyone. The idea of having a horseshoe shaped table is something which they're looking at but might not be able to satisfy.
If that’s not the case we will remain in a classroom style but the idea is to have both Board members and the At-Large community and leadership to be in the first rows so that the people who at the head table are actually able to see people in the room. The problem we had in Costa Rica was that a handful of people were in front and then they were scattered all the way down to the back, very difficult to see who was going to speak.
Okay next one is the At-Large meeting with the GAC and there are two action items on there although it came out on the ExCom call that we were a little baffled about the first question, the first action item. The ALAC to send an invitation to Heather Dryden to have a meeting on the human rights and rights of internet users, there was a discussion on this. I asked maybe one of my colleagues who might remember what this was about specifically, Evan?
Evan Leibovitch: Hi Olivier. If I remember correctly, the issue was to deal with the registrants rights and end-user rights issues that ALAC has been championing. And I believe there was some sentiment within the GAC that they had an interest in this issue too in establishing either a document or some kind of assertion of end-user rights within ICANN. Remembering back to that meeting, I believe that there was an action item to try and move forward and get some greater collaboration between the GAC and ALAC as we move forward to try and assert some kind of rights declaration or rights assertion. Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Evan for this update. The second action item was for the ALAC and the GAC to form a small working group which would draft a joint statement on the ICANN conflicts of interest, one of the big -
Jean Jacques Subrenat: Thank you, sorry I cannot put up my hand here because I'm still not on Adobe Connect. I'd like to make a suggestion is that perhaps you approach Heather Dryden for both of these subjects because I think it's quite difficult for them to have separate working groups on all these topics. Would it make sense to suggest that we have one joint working group with them which would have two subjects?
On the one hand the rights and the rights of internet users which would be one topic and the proposed joint statement on conflicts of interest would be the other. I say this because from experience I know that’s it's always very difficult to get the GAC to volunteer people to join any working group at all because they have to refer to their governments and they can only act on a complete consensus basis, etc.
Since we’re going to approach them in any case, could we do it for both these topics, that’s my first point. My second point is since I'm the one who at that ALAC GAC meeting had made the proposal of working on the draft joint statement I volunteered to be part of that group, thanks.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Jean Jacques, it's certainly a very good idea to ask Heather Dryden, the Chair of GAC, to be able to build maybe one working group instead of two, although I'm not sure whether the same people participated in the first discussion than in the second discussion. Perhaps leaving the option for Heather to see if the GAC would like one or two working groups and most possibly the GAC would choose one working group to work on.
Jean Jacques Subrenat: Yes Olivier I think that’s a good idea. I'll leave it up to you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you and that’s an action item which of course is for me and as you have guessed, I have not pursued this yet. I have not contacted and followed up with Heather on this. One of the reasons is because it's been such a busy week after the Costa Rica meeting that both on our side but also on the GAC also takes a little break. And it's [inaudible 00:36:38] hard to get people back in as a follow up to the ICANN meeting that takes place face to face.
Let's move on to the next action item and that’s the ALAC Policy Discussion Parts 1 and 2, we had a meeting with the Address Supporting Organization, ASO and the ALAC and the ASO were to continue working together so as to engage further the list of contacts and countries that the ALSs are present in, is to be sent over to the ASO and the ASO is to send ALAC a list of their meetings.
Just as a quick reminder, the ASO comprises the RIRs, the Regional Internet Registries which are also distributed around the world in a geographical fashion and geographical manner and brining synergies between the local RIRs and the RALOs is something that has been discussed and is certainly something seen very positively. So having ALAC members being able to attend local RIR meetings is an excellent way forward. Has staff been able to send the list of contacts and countries that ALSs are in?
Heidi Ullrich: That would be something for Matt so I'm going to hand that over to Matt.
Matt Ashtiani: Hi, no, it has not been done yet but I will get it done this week.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thanks very much Matt. Next is the ExCom meeting that took place after at the end of the week after the closing of the Costa Rica meeting? We had a visit of Xavier Calvez the ICANN Chief Financial Officer. And so a number of action items came out of that, the first one is staff to remind Xavier Calvez about the question from Sala on the percentage of the ICANN budget allocated towards outreach for the last five years on an annual basis. That is marked in progress and I haven't seen a reply yet so I gather it is still in progress?
Heidi Ullrich: Correct.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Heidi to work with Xavier Calvez to find a time for a call with the FBSC and the ALAC, the Finance and Budget Subcommittee in the next couple of weeks. Now we have actually already the Finance and Budget Subcommittee has already had a call by itself to look at the follow up from the Costa Rica meeting and Tijani Ben Jemaa who attended a meeting with the ICANN CFO, provided us with an update.
Now we are looking at having a call with Xavier Calvez in the forthcoming week, that’s in progress. [Inaudible 00:40:04] approved the liaison reports webpage. Staff is to set up a Wiki page template based on the ccNSO liaison reports webpage for other liaisons. Now that’s one thing which I have to approve I guess and that’s in progress as well. We have to follow up on this. I see Cheryl has put her hand up, of course having being the author of those ccNSO liaison reports she might have to say a few words about this, Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you Olivier. That’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say that during the ccNSO council meeting only an hour and a half ago that Ron and I attended - Ron raised the point with the ccNSO council about the benefits of him having a very similar Wiki system to what we have for the benefit of ongoing reporting to that. So it does of course fit perfectly in part to our implementation of ALAC improvement recommendations.
If it's at all possible if in that AI if staff could make sure that they collect Ron Sherwood into that cluster group and liaise with is it Gabby or perhaps Ron you can help me, is it Gabby or Christina. I thought it was Christina who was the Wiki guru in ccNSO world. But whichever of the staff is dealing with this, that’s all.
Ron Sherwood: Either of them will work with it.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I gather this is Ron?
Ron Sherwood: Yes it is.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Ron we might have lost Cheryl because she was in the middle of her sentence after introducing you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Nope I said thank you and muted.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Ah okay thank you. Well thank you Cheryl, thank you Ron. Definitely a good idea and we’re always glad that Ron is joining us. I note that he probably spent more time with the ALAC than with the ccNSO in Costa Rica. He spent a lot of time with us but I hope the collaboration with the ccNSO continues in the same way that it has. Thanks to our two liaisons. With regards to your -
Ron Sherwood: There are more ALAC meetings than there are ccNSO meetings.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Lucky you. Okay well let's move on to the next action item there and I promise that I will have a closer look at the liaison reports work page and probably approve this. The next one is Heidi to follow up with Compliance regarding the lack of a dot mobi liaison. Having seen no reply it is progress, so far.
Heidi Ullrich: I heard back from Compliance that they're going to check the contract they have with dot mobi and also we are working internally on getting the correct contact for dot mobi. So I'm hoping that we’ll have some progress on that in the next week or so.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Heidi. You might wish to remind them that they also check bylaws of dot mobi because this is a bylaw mandated thing that would have an influence on the contract as well. And for the record we’re quite sorry that it is coming to this but it has now been over a year that we have been trying to contact dot mobi to find out how to appoint a new liaison since our last liaison who was Andres Piazza moved on and took on another job. We’ll just quickly go through the completed action items, the three subheadings being compliance, events roadmap and the WHOIS Working Group session maybe?
I'm not quite sure who. Compliance ALAC will consider the issue of suspension and send further questions to Compliance staff for clarification and Compliance to update the ALAC on the status of the Compliance Complaints Form. That’s been moving forward and so that’s done. The next one the events roadmap, ALAC to vote on the ALAC statement on the WHOIS Review Team Draft Report during the ALAC wrap up session on Wednesday, 14 March, that was done.
And the third one is the ExCom to ask Akram Atallah, ICANN COO, and Xavier Calvez, ICANN CFO, why ICANN cannot fund outreach activities to non ICANN events -- in fact, why ICANN - ICANN outreach activities for At-Large, to non ICANN events because it certainly funds outreach activities for Board members to go to non ICANN events. Jean Jacques you have the floor.
Jean Jacques Subrenat: Thank you. As this is a recurring problem and by the way, it's a recurring problem also for many members of the Board of ICANN, I can tell you that I think we should make a stronger statement. I suppose that the meeting you referred to with the CEO and the CFO has taken place but there will be others and if necessary perhaps send a letter. I think it has to be pointed out that there is a mandate of ALAC requires that to be efficient and to cover all the subjects we do need to attend for instance IGF and other things because they tend to forget that.
And if we don’t maintain the pressure this will be lost upon the next CEO. I remind you of this because this is a major event in the life of ICANN. And this is going to happen in June, the selection of the new CO who will be appointed then. We will have a thousand things to do. And I think it's worthwhile reminding her or him that this is not an option. It is becoming more and more an imperative. I'd just like for the record to state that this should be notched up one notch to a more forceful and important topic, thanks.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Jean Jacques. And in fact, I would like to ask staff to follow up with Xavier Calvez with regards to our question, the question was asked and I haven't seen any reply yet. I remember the answer was I will have to come back to you on this. I see there is plenty of approval from people on the Adobe Connect for your suggestion of notching - moving things one notch up. And I absolutely agree with you that with a new CEO taking position, we need to be relentless in asking for this.
Jean Jacques Subrenat: Thank you all, I cannot see what you have written on Adobe Connect but thank you for the message Olivier. I would like to follow up on that with another thought, it's that the CFO and the COO will not spontaneously be [inaudible 00:48:39] as a possible priority when they meet their new CEO. I think that whatever staff could also and certainly members of our ExCom, whatever can be done before the nomination of the CEO, not long before, would be very useful. Because then they would say we have this problem about At-Large not attending events, etc. And it is affecting negatively their representativity or their efficiency.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Jean Jacques. The question I have in response to your suggestion here is do we know by any chance when the announcement for the new CEO will be made?
Jean Jacques Subrenat: Well I think we will have an inkling a bit before Prague but then in Prague the nominations should become official, that’s my own guess. It's about the wording, I discovered this and see that working group session it says to ask the COO and the CFO why ICANN cannot fund outreach activities, etc. I think we have to be forceful and say according to the mandate of ALAC blah, blah, blah, it is necessary too. This has not been done so far or not efficiently and we suggest that for the next six months, from June to December and just give an example of what we expect. If they can't there will always be enough voice to be able to tell us, sorry we can't for this year, but at least we should try, thanks.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Jean Jacques. And I note that the Finance and Budget Subcommittee having complied the budgets has filed the requests for several requests for attendance at local activities including the Internet Governance Forum, two regions have filed requests for such funding. I see that Cheryl has her hand up and then I'll have to move on because we are already one hour into our call or nearly one hour into our call, Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you Olivier. Just briefly to inform you all what little I have heard reported by Board members on the matter of Board announcements and timing etc. [Inaudible 00:51:28] call [inaudible 00:51:30] with the Board members who are appointed by the ccNSO, recognizing that they also serve on the selection committee. The indication was that it is to be an early May announcement. That would mean that we should know well in advance of Prague and of course we do know that [inaudible 00:52:01] all Paris with the interviews of the short list of people over the weekend, thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Cheryl. And next we have no one in the queue so we have to move on. But the points are noted, thank you for making those. And so we’ll move now to the next part of our main agenda. We’re now going to look at the review of the current At-Large structure applications. And I will ask staff to quickly take us through those please.
Matt Ashtiani: Hi, we have the recently approve ALS applications which are the Ecuadorian Association for Free Software, the Internet Society - Trinidad and Tobago Chapter, and the Internet Society Behind Chapter. The ones that are currently undergoing accreditation are the Association del Escribanos de Paraguay. We’re waiting for the advice to come again from LACRALO.
This is also the same situation for the National Association for Digital Inclusion, #162 Wiki Media Austria, the ALAC is voting on the application right now. #164, Media Education Center and GO, we’re awaiting regional advice from APRALO. And our newest applicant is the ATPDID. The due diligence was received last night and so it'll soon be forwarded to the AFRALO for their regional advice.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you very much Matt. Just a quick note you might’ve noticed that the [Speaks French] had actually already gone through the process, including a vote that took place. But due to questions about the actual decision which had been made and the decision which had been made by LACRALO and a misunderstanding, I took steps to actually cancel those two votes and restart the process from scratch, asking for regional advice from LACRALO.
And LACRALO has a chance to also explain its reasons for the choice that it has made in those. As soon as the regional advice is received and passed on to the ALAC the vote will then open on those two applications. We’ll now move to the reports and I see Tijani has his hand up.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes thank you Olivier. I said that for the decision for the #166 AFRALO didn’t give the advice because we didn’t receive yet the due diligence. We are waiting for the due diligence to be able to make our point of view, thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Tijani. Staff I thought due diligence had been sent to AFRALO? I certainly saw something in my mailbox.
Matt Ashtiani: Yes I was saying that we received the due diligence last night. And that I will process it and send it to AFRALO today.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay so it's a case of I've read it before it's been sent out. Okay thank you for these and now we’ll move quickly to the reports and noting that we are already quite late. I invite all of you to have a look at the At-Large reports from the different working groups that we have. We have a lot of working groups in operation and they have been extremely busy all of them. In fact, later on in this call we have a quick update from all the At-Large working groups. We’ll move to the RALOs and liaisons Wiki page as well and you'll notice our liaisons have been busy and I must welcome specifically the first report from Julie Hammer, our SSAC liaison who has produced a very good report as well.
All linked from the page of At-Large reports from working groups, RALOs and liaisons. I'm just going to give the floor for one or two minutes to Alan Greenberg who is our GNSO liaison and a couple of minutes also to Cheryl Langdon-Orr who is our ccNSO liaison, the most important knowledge that needs to be known about what's going on in those two supporting organizations. Alan you have the floor for a minute or so.
Alan Greenberg: Thank you, I don’t really have anything I need to highlight at this meeting. I've done a relatively extensive report of the last meeting I would suggest people read it and I will be glad to handle any questions. But I don’t think there's anything that needs to be highlighted at this meeting.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you very much.
Alan Greenberg: If there is something I'll go into it but I wasn’t planning on talking, thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you Alan. Just one thing that I do note which is that during the Costa Rica meeting a statement was drafted by the ALAC on the protection of the Red Cross name and the Olympic name in the new gTLD process. And this was passed on pretty quickly to the GNSO. And I understand that the GNSO proceeded forward with its vote. However the Board did not take up the advice from the GNSO and basically noted the opposition both from the ALAC and also from the NCUC.
Alan Greenberg: Olivier you can glow in the after feeling that we convinced the Board not to act. I believe in fact that’s false. I believe the Board didn’t act because there was really nothing the recommendation that was compelling enough for them to take action. I really don’t think there's any substance in the fact that we caused the Board not to do that. I think the issue itself was such that there was no compelling reason for the Board to take action at that late date in the round that was already open.
The possible outcomes were not sufficient enough to warrant the trouble it will cause. That’s my opinion, I have no inside information but we can certainly take credit for it but I believe to be honest that’s not quite applicable, thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Alan and you’ve just signed the end of my five seconds of joy so I'll pass on the floor to Cheryl now.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: In fact I saw Avri’s hand raised while Alan was speaking and I suspect her point would’ve been particularly to the point that the GNSO liaison was raising. I'm happy to hear from her first if you don’t mind?
Avri Doria: I was going to comment on that. I think that there is truth to say that the Board was in a position of doing nothing new. And I think that between ALAC statement and NCUC statement it managed to reinforce that there was absolutely no reason for them to take. And I think without those statements and only with a G Council statement saying move ahead with all these other things they might've been in a very forced position. I do think that both ALAC and NCUC can take solace that they achieved something, thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you very much Avri. I see agreement on the floor. I also see that Evan’s hand was put up. He pretty much said what you’ve mentioned just now. Evan do you want to add something to this or?
Evan Leibovitch: I just wanted to make you feel happy again Olivier. I think while the ALAC statement and what we did and the two pronged approach that we did together with the work that Alan did within the GNSO and the work that we did with our independent statement, I believe we did the best of all worlds. We showed that we were not an impediment to the process while still being able to state quite emphatically that we didn’t think that this was something worth acting upon.
And while I would agree with Alan that we did not on our own cause the Board to take the decision it did, we certainly made it easier for the Board to justify its actions in the face of those external pressures that were making it do this thing in the first place, thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Evan, I noticed Cheryl you hand is up, of course for your liaison report but do you wish to add something on this as well?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Nope.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: So I will pass the floor to Alan Greenberg.
Alan Greenberg: Thank you. Evan's last point of maybe it helped in the rationale for why they didn't do something, I can certainly support that. And I think we are in a position right now, ALAC within ICANN where substantive things we say at critical moments if we define why we are in a position to change things and to influence outcomes. I think that’s something we should be taking credit for and we should be smiling about.
In this particular case being relatively well versed on the issues and having sat through most of the meetings is the GNSO council made; I do not believe there was really any substantive benefit. It would’ve ended up with something which was far more elegant and probably what should've been done to begin with but given the timing I cannot see any compelling reason to have taken action at that point. And I suspect the Board was intuitive enough to see that as well. I'm not saying we are not able to influence things, we certainly are. I don’t think this was one of them. But so be it, thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Alan. And just as a closing remark on this point, we’ll have a virtual party at the end of this call and Alan will not be invited. Cheryl?
Alan Greenberg: Olivier I'd be glad to not be invited to the whole meeting.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I didn’t say the meeting, I said the virtual party.
Alan Greenberg: If you're not going to invite me to the parties, I'm not going to come to the work park.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: You know I [inaudible 01:05:11] Alan but thanks very much for this update.
Alan Greenberg: So much for not talking on my report.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Your two minutes are up, next is Cheryl Langdon-Orr.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Gee I'm not sure I should say anything because it could blow out into a huge discussion. Just one or two notable things on the ongoing updates I do on the Wiki, this week and application for membership to ccNSO via dot ps which is a ccTLD operator for the Palestinian Territories was received along with an all clear from IANA. It is expected that this will be finalized on the list and in the process for the ccNSO with no issues raised so far, just for your information, by April 25 or 26.
This is just another step in what are being reported as a continuing and quite healthy grown of ccNSO membership from ccTLD operators. As I've said before we have opportunity here particularly when we look at outreach and interaction. And the other thing just to point out is that the highlights report including all sorts of video and pretty pictures and some [inaudible 01:06:46] etc., are up from the ccNSO meetings in San José. And all of those interesting bits sitting at the very top of my liaison reports page, thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Cheryl. Much appreciated to stick within the one minute allocated time. I'm not going to open the floor for discussion. I think we have to move on swiftly mindful of the time and go into new business. The items for decision with the Policy Advice Development Calendar, what I wondered is we do have one specific part which is actually Item 7 where there needs to be a quick discussion and perhaps even a vote on this.
And so I was going to suggest that we start first with Item 7, the Draft ALAC Statement on the VeriSign Request to Implement Reduction Grace Period, RPG for dot name discussion and vote. And with Alan giving us a brief description of what the statement is all about. I invite everyone to look at the agenda page. It has a link over to the draft statement and Alan you have the floor.
Alan Greenberg: Thank you just for correct should be RGP. Alright the issue is the following, most of the gTLDs that exists right now; most of the unsponsored gTLDs implement something called a Redemption Grace Period. That’s says after a name is deleted because of the way processes work, not all names are deleted when someone doesn't want them anymore. But when a name is deleted it goes into a holding pattern for 30 days during which the original registrant can for the payment of the fee get it back.
It's not available for other registrations for a 30 day period following its being deleted by the registrar. That is implemented for all unsponsored gTLDs except dot name. And I'll go into in a moment probably why that happened. The post expiration domain name recovery pedner PDP had a requirement that was accepted by the Board saying it must be implemented by all unsponsored gTLDs which means dot name had to do it. Plus all the new gTLDs that will be coming about as a result of the new program will have to do it.
One of the reasons that perhaps the dot name didn’t do it, and I don’t have any real insight, is that dot names a little bit different than most other TLDs. And certainly different from all the other unsponsored ones. In that most registrations are not at the second level but are at the third level. And as a result the RGP was never implemented at that level. In addition, dot name has another class of registration for email forwarding which again is different from all the other TLDs.
Under pedner dot name will be compelled to implement it once the pedner recommendations are implemented. Pedner was completely silent on how it should implement it in terms of the third level and other things like that. This is an action from VeriSign to perhaps get ahead of the curve a little bit and are voluntarily saying they are implementing the RGP for dot name ahead of it being absolutely required.
And they are doing at all the possible registration levels, that is the second level for surnames, the third level for individual instances and the email forwarding. And the statement that I'm suggesting basically simply says we support it and we appreciate that VeriSign is doing this ahead of being compelled to do tit and are doing it all the levels it's applicable instead of an absolute minimalist approach.
We also do point out that in their request they say that this is not required but they're doing it voluntarily and we point out but yes that in a month or two it would be required. But nevertheless they're doing something good and I think we should say that when someone does that. It's a very short statement. I would like to see it approve. ICANN has given its preliminary approval for this process. Normally for a process of this ICANN is supposed to respond within 15 days.
They didn’t in this case. But nevertheless there was preliminary support but I think it's reasonable that before it's actually implemented we put our support on the record, thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Alan and I note that it is a short statement but at the same time Heidi has put it online. However some of our members are not on the Adobe Connect would it be possible for you to read the statement to the record?
Alan Greenberg: If I can find it. “ALAC supports the VeriSign request to implement the redemption grace period for dot name at the second and third level as well as for email forwarding. We note that the request states the RGP is voluntary, that is currently correct. But once the Board approves post expiration domain name recovery PDP recommendations, once the Board approved recommendations are implemented it will be a mandatory for dot name.
For most TLDs the RGP only applies to the second level registrations and pedner was silent as to whether it should apply at any other levels. The ALAC applauds VeriSign to take the initiative for the RGP for dot name prior to being formally required. In this particular [inaudible 01:13:34] they have chosen to implement it all levels at which registrations are made.
I will comment and I should've added earlier, the RGP was created largely by a joint work of the ICANN Legal Counsel at the time and VeriSign since they were the ones who were suffering the problems of not having it initially. Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Alan and I hope that our interpreters were able to follow the reading since it was a little fast. However, -
Alan Greenberg: It was in the chat, hopefully they had the text.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes that’s right I was going to say I noticed it is in the chat and the interpreters are on the chat. It might’ve helped them to interpret what was being said. Now the reason why I'm asking for this to be on read on the record is because I understand there is a very short time span. This advice needs to be given ASAP. And so the idea is to conduct a vote here with all of the ALAC members present. Before that are there any questions from anyone regarding this statement? I see no hands up and I was going to suggest then that we take a vote in order to be able to ratify this.
Heidi Ullrich: Cheryl has reminded me that we need to have a second draft of this.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: We do that’s absolutely correct. Proposer I guess I would be the proposer and we have a seconder for this.
Evan Leibovitch: I'll second it.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Evan thank you. I see Eduardo is also seconding and I saw a tick from Sergio that is also seconding this. Of course with the RPG being corrected into RGP we will make everyone happy. The chat is going crazy at the moment. We have recorded the various seconders and see Sergio has put his hand up Sergio you have the floor. Okay Sergio has put his hand down. Let's move on then with a vote.
We can see the link over to the proposed statement with RPG being corrected to RGP and so the question I would like to ask the ALAC is do you support the ratification of the ALAC statement on the VeriSign request to implement the redemption grace period, RGP, for dot name workspace. May I ask all those in favor to put a tick? And by that I mean all ALAC members in favor.
We can only have ALAC members voting please. Using the widget that you have - Jean Jacques you are not on there so we will take your vote on the phone, if you wish?
Jean Jacques Subrenat: Yes, please, so my vote is yes. Thank you Alan.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Jean Jacques. Jean Jacques has voted yes and I see now in the list of members I don't see everyone with a tick on there yet. Let's see if staff could make the -
Heidi Ullrich: I do have quorum it has passed, Jean Jacques, Eduard Diaz, Evan Leibovitch, Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Sergio Salinas Porto, Tijani Ben Jemaa, Yaovi Atohoun, and Titi, have I missed anyone?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Carlton Samuels perhaps.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes Carlton. So we have nine members have I missed anyone that is not on the Adobe Connect?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay then we will ask anyone against this motion if you could please put a big red cross using the Adobe Connect or if you are on the line, say they are against. For those who have voted you can take your green ticks off. I see no crosses. And anyone abstaining? I see no abstentions so far. I wonder if we have an account of all ALAC members here, could I have a count please?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes we don't have any vote from Natalia.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Natalia Enciso has dropped. I'll ask again Natalia put a green tick by your name if you wish to vote for the motion or to ratify the statement. A red cross if you're voting against. It's a green tick. No abstentions, no one voting against and is that full? How many votes do we have for?
Heidi Ullrich: Oh we have 10 in favor, 0 against and 0 abstentions.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you and could we have a list again for the record for who is in favor?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, in favor for this vote we have Jean Jacques Subrenat, Eduardo Diaz, Evan Leibovitch, Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Sergio Salinas Porto, Tijani Ben Jemaa, Yaovi Atohoun, Titi, Carlton Samuels and Natalia Enciso.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you very much so this is carried. And the statement will be submitted to the relevant parties. Let's then move back to Item 6, thanking everyone for having voted to move forward on this and so we’re now back to Item 6, Policy Advice Development Calendar. We have 20 minutes for this I note that it is already half past the hour. We are at the end of our usually allocated time. Prior to this and moving though this I wanted to thank Alan quickly. I was going to thank him because I think he has a lot more to talk to us about with regards to several other statements there.
But thank you very much Alan for having drafted this at such a short time and having alerted us to this for the ALAC to be able to take action and have a report out. Back to the Policy Advice Development Calendar, we have many different statements going on at eh moment. It's quite incredible. We've never had so much going on simultaneously. First there are three [inaudible 01:23:16] ALAC statement.
The first one being the ALAC statement on the reservation of Olympic and Red Cross names and new gTLD application process and that was carried actually presented and like I said earlier we don’t need to go back to it. for those who drafted this, it was a real success. The next one is the ICANN Board Conflicts of Interest Review, revised conflict of interest policy and related governance documents. A first draft of a statement was put together by Beau Brendler and Carlton Samuels.
And a short statement, this short statement was filed. However there is another statement that is forthcoming because in this first statement we mentioned that we reserve the right to add a fuller statement. So in the next couple of days a larger statement will be circulated, will be put on the wiki, and comments from the At-Large community will be asked for and we will file this before the end of the official reply period. What we're effectively doing is to reply to our first comment.
The next is the Board Policy Review Team Draft report. This has been drafted and filed and thank you very much, many thanks over to Carlton who drafted this. So now we have statements currently being reviewed by the ALAC at various levels of advance.
The first one is the .Com Registry Agreement Renewal. Alan did you wish to say a few words on this or was it Holly because I know that Holly developed the –
Alan Greenberg: Holly was the one who formally did the writing. I contributed parts of it as did Evan.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay.
Alan Greenberg: I certainly speak to it.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Do we have Holly online perhaps? I'm not sure. I know it is about 4:00 in the morning for her, so she might not be too happy.
Alan Greenberg: I haven't seen her. I don't know.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: You haven't seen her? So Alan if you can say a few words please.
Alan Greenberg: Sure. To a large extent we don't have anything substantive to say with one exception and that is to note with some strength that were disappointed that I can hasn't taken the opportunity to ensure that .com, the largest of the TLDs, uses the Thick WHOIS and this is something that could be done through a PDP.
And in fact there is a PDP that has been initiated and currently delayed, but it also could be done through contractual negotiations and we're simply saying that we really think that ICANN should avail themselves of all the benefits that they themselves say comes with Thick WHOIS based on the issue report that was done by the policy staff. And based on the fact that ICANN has unilaterally declared that all new TLDs must be Thick WHOIS, that we're simply saying that we think that they should take this opportunity.
The PDP that was initiated in San Jose has now been deferred. That is the next step, that is drafting a charter, will not be done until after the .com negotiations is finished. The implicit statement in that is conceivably it could happen as a result negotiations therefore why should the GNSO put work into a process in parallel and we're basically saying we agree that it should be done and it should require a PDP to do this. So that's the statement and I believe it's a reasonably strong statement saying ICANN should own up to what they say is the right thing to do and put it in.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Alan. And so the call for comments from the ALAC is until the 20th of April, so that gives a few more days for members here to be able to comment on this.
Because of time constraints we'll have to move onto the next one on a list which is the Draft ALAC Statement on the Securities, Stability, and Residency of the DNS Review Team, the SSRT Draft Report. And here a statement was drafted very kindly by Julie Hammer who has put a very good statement together.
The status that it is in right now is it's still up for comments. If I can find the right page to find out what status it is in at the moment please.
Heidi Ullrich: Olivier?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yep?
Heidi Ullrich: This is Heidi. I believe it's passed. Matt is that correct? I believe that the vote closed on Sunday. Matt?
Matt Ashtiani: Let me check the schedule right now. Yes, I believe it's passed. I think we actually [inaudible 01:29:02].
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, 12 out of 15 members have voted. It has passed and it was announced on Sunday.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you. So perhaps it would be good at that point to write that it was adopted on the overall table, At-Large Policy Development Page, but I gather that would be updated as soon as possible. And thanks to everyone for having passed this excellent statement.
We'll move to the next one, the Draft ALAC Statement on the Various Signed Requests to Implement a Redemption Grace Period for RGP for adopt name.
We've done that. We've gone through agenda item #7, so the next one is the Draft ALAC Statement on the Fake Renewal Notices Report.
The ALAC is voting on this at the moment. The closing time is the 17th of April that it says here. So for all of you who have not voted yet could you please by the end of the business day or as soon as possible.
The next one is the At-Large Draft Advice Letter on Consumer Trust, Consumer Choice, and Competition. The ALAC vote closes on the 24th of April. Is this out for voting already? Goodness, it's so many of them. Yes, comments close today and I believe that will be submitted today.
Matt Ashtiani: Hi this Matt.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes Matt please.
Matt Ashtiani: Sorry, comments closed yesterday and it's currently being voted on.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, excellent. Thank you. So comments closed yesterday and it's been voted on, fantastic.
Okay, the next one is the Draft ALAC Statement on the IDN Variant Issues Project, The Proposed Project Plan for Next Steps and here again thanks to Rinalia who drafted this one. Thanks very much to Rinalia for having drafted this of course with input from the IDN Working Group Team and of course with help from Edmon Chung who is our IDN liaison.
There's been a lot of work that was done in close we could on this with a meeting with the IDN Variants Working Group as well and discussions with the Chair who is Dennis Jennings and also with Naela Sarras, so a very well rounded statement. And for those who have not voted for it yet please do.
I see Sergio has put his hand up, so Sergio would you like to add something. I’m sorry I was reading the other page so I might have missed your hand up for a while.
Sergio Salinas Porto: Hello this is Sergio. Can you hear me?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes, we can.
Sergio Salinas Porto: I would like to say that Olivier made a mistake. He said that the voting period for the renewal when it comes to the ALAC statement on the Fake Renewal Notice this report ended on the 17th of April and I think that it is a mistake here. I think it ends on the 19th, so we have two days yet to vote. That is the correction I wanted to make.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: On the renewal period, but the ALAC vote – Thank you Sergio for this. I have to check. I'm only relying on what is on their agenda here, so met with to have the exact date?
Heidi Ullrich: Olivier this is Heidi.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes, Heidi please go ahead.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, I'm looking at the public comment page and it states Renewal Notice Report, the comment period, ends the 20th of April, so Matt if you can comment on the date of the vote.
Matt Ashtiani: Sure.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Heidi if I can just say, this is the public comment period itself but we need to have this filed by the 20th of April and this why the At-Large comment period closes usually a day earlier or sometimes even a couple of days earlier if the statement is long so as to be able to incorporate all of the input.
Matt Ashtiani: I think he's talking about the vote not the modification of the statement.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, I'm looking at our PD page and the vote closes for the Fake Renewal is indeed on the 19th. The date of submission is the 20th. The vote closes the 19th.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay. Well it still makes it that everyone who has not voted yet needs to vote, but thank you for this point of clarification.
And we'll move on to the next on our list and that's the Currently Open Policy Forms and these are ones which we have not submitted statements yet and we are asking for comments.
The first one is the Second Annual IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process Review. Unfortunately our IDN liaison is not here. Rinalia Abdul Rahim is not here either. Would anyone be able to speak about this and advise us whether we wish to go forward with such a statement? I see Cheryl Langdon-Orr has put her hand up. Cheryl you have the floor.
Cheryl Langdon Orr: Thank you Olivier. This is a matter for the discussion at the APRALO called today and we were very keen to have our ALAC representatives bring four to the ALAC the importance of this. We don't believe it will be an onerous or extensive comment, but we would like to do to the nature of the importance of IDN and indeed of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process which ALAC was a integral part of developing and the success of which we think will reflect well upon us all.
The importance of that our region we would indeed like to have the ALAC put in a statement on this and obviously a fairly assertive one into that. And we believe it is something that could be requested of the IDN liaison knowing his small work team in support of his activities has the skills definite [inaudible 01:34:15] interest to do so in a timely manner. Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Cheryl. And so we will punt this over to the IDN liaison for a reply as soon as possible and of course the IDN Working Group will receive a copy of this.
The .post Agreement Amendment is the last of our Policy Advice Development Calendar. Would anyone like to speak about this please?
Alan Greenberg: I certainly can.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes Alan please go ahead.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. The current .post agreement as virtually all the other gTLD agreements say that you cannot register new second level names which are the same as any of the existing TLDs, that is the gTLDs or ccTLDs.
The New gTLD contract has a similar restriction for the ccTLDs. The two character names does not have any restriction on the gTLDs, so a .com or .org is a valid second level registration for .sport or .green whatever or will be.
The current agreement says that you can only use those, that is the existing TLDs of the second level with the permission of the appropriate government which obviously is focused on the ccTLDs and not the gTLDs.
.post is asking for relief from that restriction that is which will allow them to use without getting permission from anyone, any of the TLDs as a second level. So for instance they could then have a .ca.post or a .uk.post or .fr.post which makes a lot of sense I suspect because that is a uniform and easy way of getting to the post of authority for any given country presumably that's the long term intent.
You know this .post is run by the International Postal Union. Personally I have no feeling that the ALAC has to get involved. Moving the restriction form the TLD, the gTLDs .com, .org, .edu, is something that as a restriction is not there for any of the New gTLDs and no one has focused on that in the many years of discussion on the process and giving them the open right to use the ccTLDs without asking the appropriate government.
I think if anyone wants to object they should go through the GAC. You know if governments say, "No, no, this is ours and .post can't use it without asking us nicely," that's a GAC issue not ours. So from a personal point of view I think it's probably a good thing, but whether they should be allowed to do this unilaterally I don't think I have a strong position. I'm not sure if anyone in ALAC does.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Alan for this description. The floor is open very quickly for anyone who has a comment on this. Avri Doria?
Avri Doria: Yeah, just a quick comment. I think I would advise you all to stay as far away from that one as you can because that falls into the whole ICANN shall not tell government what they can or can't do or should or should not be done with their place of designation.
You know I have actually a strong prejudice against doing it, but that's not what matters. I suggest you stay away from this one because there's no opinion you can give that won't be problematic. Thanks.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Avri and I see several, a couple of ticks, on the Adobe Connect. Does anyone feel that we should be involved and write a statement? If they do please speak up now I guess. I see no one jumping up and down for the time being, so let's say that the ALAC will not be submitting a statement on this except if anybody comes later to propose sending a statement. But for the time being no statement on the .post Agreement Amendment.
Okay, we'll move now to the items for discussion. I realize we only have 10 more minutes of interpretation.
Cheryl Langdon Orr: Sorry Olivier, Cheryl here.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes Cheryl please go ahead.
Cheryl Langdon Orr: Thank you. I have a particular request and I do apologize. I'm in a torrential storm and I can hardly hear myself with the rain, so that background noise I can't do anything.
A request from APRALO which may need an action item perhaps from Silvia at the Outcomes of the ALAC's deliberations on what freshly opened public comment topics do you decide you will be and indeed will not be responding to from this meeting, if that could be forwarded to the APRALO leadership. Because what we're trying to do is ensure we're not chasing our tail and so we want to have our own regional advice tempered by choices to deal with tempered by whether or not the ALAC is doing it as well.
We don't want to duplicate, so if that could happen in the absence of any of our APRALO reps being on the call now I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Cheryl, so that will be noted, of course noting as well that the ALAC is not telling the regions what to do. It really is for the regions to tell the ALAC what to do, but on this case as you rightly mentioned with no representatives from the region the region will be advised.
Right, so we are now on the next items for discussions. As I was mentioning we only have about 10 minutes left for interpretation. We were going to go through an update from all of the At-Large Working Groups then the At-Large Prague Meeting Development. I was hoping that we might wish to skip and then there will just be some information notes at the end.
First and update from At-Large Working Groups. If I could ask Avri and Cintra, and I'm not sure who wishes to speak on this, to give us a brief update on all of the activities of the New gTLD Working Group. And I understand that Dev is also involved in there. You all got your names by the agenda item, so I'll leave the floor over to you Avri, Cintra, and Dev.
Avri Doria: Thanks. This is Avri and if it's okay I'll start and first of all to apologize for not having written a status report. I know I should have, I still should. I keep traveling and I keep saying, "As soon as this thing gets resolved I'll write it," but anyhow I will write one even though I'm late.
One of the items we're still at the beginning of is the rollout issues and putting that together so I'm not going to talk about that at all. That's an effort that we'll be starting up real soon now. Cintra and I have traded responsibilities for it and I'm going to take responsibility for this item.
In terms of the applications support issues we had a conversation, the core group from JAS and such, with staff about how to proceed. The JAS group needs to have a meeting to sort of approve that and the relationship between the At-Large New gTLD Working Group which contains almost all the people that were At-Large in JAS as well as few that were GNSO in JAS and the remnants of the JAS group is uncertain.
There are some storm clouds there in terms of the GNSO going with [inaudible 01:46:03]. We said you could track what they were doing and support, but we're not sure about this level of participation. And the level of participation they're asking for is that from the JAS participants or the At-Large New gTLD Working Group participants who were JAS participants that a number of them participate in the SARP [ph?] as nonvoting helpers, references there to sort of be of assistance.
And that's something that the core team that was working with the staff was very much in favor of. It needs to go to the JAS group and so that's an issue. We should be having a meeting this week within the JAS environment that deals with that, but obviously since At-Large has chartered the At-Large New gTLD Working Group to be the one to follow-up on this is also an issue for that group and then I'm open to questions on that. I'm not sure how much I can say.
On the objection process because of possible conflict of interest that I might have and certainly the appearance of conflict of interest that I have because of my research consulting work for some New gTLD applicants I basically stepped back from that effort and basically Cintra is now, as Vice Chair of the group, the person that's actually responsible. I'm still going to be helping administratively in those things that are not at all conflict.
So I want to ask her to talk about the issues of the letter that's going to be going out to ALAC and RALO is looking for volunteers for the New gTLD Review Group which was part of the package that ALAC approved when it approved the objection. And I wanted to ask Dev whose been working with staff on the tools that the gTLD Review Group and At-Large will have to work with. And they've done some really amazing work and really nice things, so first I'd like to ask Cintra though to take it and talk about the letter that's going to be out which contains issues of what we're asking and issues dealing with conflict of interest type of issues. Cintra please?
Cintra Sooknanan: Thank you very much Avri. Well I believe the draft text has been circulated to [inaudible 01:49:03] this morning. I don't know if there's any direct queries on that or if it's possible for staff to maybe post that text. I'd be happy to just briefly run through it at this point in time.
Basically the text gives a background of the work of the gTLD Issues Working Group as well as our mandate to create this New gTLD Review Group which was used specifically with the objections from At-Large with regard to the New gTLD applicants.
It gives us some real objectives of the New gTLD Review Group. Would it be helpful if I read this out? Yes, okay.
So the New gTLD already objected across the Review Group has passed and is receiving comments from At-Large either directly by email or indirectly by RALO conference calls creating or updating the New gTLD with the comment pages giving status of this of which New gTLD received comments each week and informing RALOs of deadlines with comments during the ACP and for objection statements during the 7th month objection period.
It's anticipated that these tasks will be extended for up to one year from this part of this Review Group. The composition of the Review Group would be two members recommended by each RALO and one member volunteer from each region with a final determination of the Review Group composition being up to ALAC.
Basically in a nutshell the Review Group requirement for members must have an understanding of the approved ALAC procedure by which ALAC consider to make public comments and file objections to New gTLD applications to be able to use the At-Large wiki to be able to work in English, to have an understanding of ICANNs applicant guidebook, to be able to give flexible commitment of time.
We initially anticipated at the time for this group would be 2 to 3 hours per week with bi-weekly conference calls over the 7 month objection period. But as previously stated we do anticipate the class may likely be extended to 1 year.
It's also appreciated that because of this specific deadline this 60 day comment period as well as the 7 month objection period the workload would be increased at these specific points whereas maybe during the course of the additional estimated 5 months up to the 7 month objection period it may not require so much time.
Members are also required to make a statement of interest in which they declare that they have no conflicts of interest or disclose any possible or existing conflicts of interest. A conflict of interest is defined as having an immediate being passed the previous 6 months, current or predetermined interest and interest as being financial or any other interest in the New gTLD applicant or any other qualities that may be involved in any manner with an applicant or a proposed registry.
The determination of conflict of interest is in reference to the applicant by book section 2.4.3 which details some of the [inaudible 01:53:23] guidelines.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Cintra if I could just stop you for a second. I understand the interpretation is going to stop shortly. Have you finished?
Cintra Sooknanan: Okay, I am finished. Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you. Thanks very much for working on this Cintra. The interpretation on the Spanish and French channels is about to stop shortly because we are at the top of the hour. I expect the call to last another 15 to 20 minutes and perhaps less if we are fast. But I invite all of those following us on the French and on the Spanish channel to join us on being on this channel directly for the last 15 to 20 minutes that we spend on there. And with this I now open the floor for a quick discussion.
And yes, the text itself was sent by myself a short while ago on the ALAC internal list. Now what I suggest because of the time constraints that we have is that if we give another 24 hours for everyone here to read through the text and to see if any amendments need to be made.
I must say the text itself has gone through a thorough review process both within the working group but also with myself and other ALAC Ex-Com members who have been following this closely. So it's a really good opportunity and a really fantastic way to get involved in the works of At-Large.
I have to remind everyone that this is the first time that we are now being provided with an opportunity to have an operational role and it's particularly important that we do the job well. Tijani Ben Jemaa you have raised your hand? The floor is yours.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes Olivier, thank you. It's only to say that Dev made fantastic work about the Dashboard and it will be good that people try to enter and see how it works. And they think perhaps that Dev has to make a word of mouth about it so that people knows about it and understand it. It is one of the tools of the work. Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes, thank you Tijani and you are preceding me in what I was going to say. Indeed Dev has done an excellent job and I was going to give the floor to Dev to just briefly tell us what this whole Dashboard and what the whole process was therefore the tool, if you want, that was designed by him with of course the work of the ICANN IT Department.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Thank you. Well I just posted the link to the Dashboard in the chat. Now the Dashboard is essentially a matter for which we're going to try to collect all the statistics we got in counting the number of comments that are received for comments submitted for the Evaluation Panel during the 60 day application comment period and objection comment for the 7 month objection period.
So if you go to the Dashboard you'll see three tables and the first table shows the number of comments for Evaluation Panel. Now what ICANN IT staff has done is they have added the ability to sort the tables, so if you were to click on the header rule you can sort by the page name or the number of comments. So the ideal being is that as more persons submit comments on a particular gTLD application or they actual apply for a string those number of comments will increase and therefore we can see which one is grabbing more attention.
So I also note that we can also add wiki pages with idea names in them. So that's also good because then it also offers us the ability to be able to comment on IDN gTLD pages. So that's the first table.
The second table also counts the number of comments on the objection grounds and again that is also sortable. And then the third table is the status of the application.
The status of the application is the table that has to be manually edited by the Review Group and as this title implies the intent is to track the status of the application. So using the example here, that block, there are wiki pages opened up for Evaluation Panel comments and objection comments and then there's a status field. And then this status field would be updated to see what the current situation is whether it's receiving comments, whether ALAC has decided to drop the formal comment for Evaluation Panel, ALAC has declined comment, and so forth.
The first section is the application status and this is a look at the live ICANN public posting of the New gTLD application and the applied string. And it's interactive in the sense that you can sort [inaudible 02:00:15]. If you wanted to subtract those [inaudible 02:00:19] based on New gTLD application [inaudible 02:00:24] with the following header, hit update, and you can also do searches directly using the dropdown form where you see the orange call button.
Just to [inaudible 02:00:44] the comment for the Evaluation Panel and I'll just use this one as a quick example.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Dev, I'm a bit sorry but I think we're faced with a few problems. There is echoing and I'm not sure who that came from. It seems to have gone a little bit better.
I was just going to ask one thing and it was actually mentioned earlier that perhaps a webinar about this might be interesting for our members to be able to follow. I'm just mindful of the time that we have.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Understood.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: We need to move forward but I think you've given a very good example and at least you know we got the first page and you know the work that you've done with the IT Department is absolutely fantastic and second to none.
So a personal concern of mine was that we were going to have to do absolutely everything manually and because we don't know if there will be a 100, 200, 500, 1,000, 2,000, applications it's very easy to get overwhelmed and certainly the tool will help a lot.
So the call for volunteers now for this Review Group will come out very soon and we have 24 hours to comment on the actual call for volunteers that will come out.
And I'd like to move on if we can to the next part of our agenda continuing on our working groups and moving on with the next working group that is the At-Large Improvement Taskforce. Just before that Avri was there anything else you wanted to just touch on with the New gTLD Working Group?
Avri Doria: No. The last thing I wanted to add I just typed. I really want to thank Cintra and Dev for all the work they have done and I should have capitalized Dev's name when I typed it. But yes they've been doing amazing work, the whole team has, and I think it's great. If only the Chair of the group would be diligent about status reports it would be perfect. Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: There you go. Thank you very much Avri. It really is a very productive group and it really is great to see people volunteering and spending time and working together on something which will really make a difference.
So next the At-Large Improvement Taskforce and Cheryl you have a couple of minutes to tell us what's been happening there.
You might be muted Cheryl Langdon Orr. I know you are currently probably swimming by now with the amount of rain that's been pouring around you. I hope you are able to swim. I can't hear you at the moment.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: She's floating.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Still nothing from Cheryl. I was going to ask that she speaks about the Taskforce of course and also the Rules of Procedure in Metrics which we've all been starting just now. Perhaps until we manage to get Cheryl back online I shall speak quickly about the At-Large Academy Working Group.
I think I mentioned it earlier, but a letter is about to be sent to the Chairs of SOs and ACs and also the stakeholder groups of the GNSO to invite members from those communities to join the At-Large Academy Working Group in working and defining the curriculum because it is always important to involve everyone and I guess in order to talk about the GNSO or let's say the business constituency in the GNSO.
It's important to have someone from the business constituency so as to have an unbiased view but also an insider view at how that part of the community works. And please I ask staff or Cheryl to ping me when we manage to get Cheryl back online.
The Future Challenges Working Group I would ask Evan Leibovitch to provide us with a quick summary of what's happening there.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay, I will be extremely brief about this, thank you Olivier. I'll simply talk about the fact we've been concentrating on two issues, one of which is a white paper that sort of a forward thinking document has been taken out of private discussion and put on the public wiki for anybody to look at and I invite everybody to do that.
We've also been focusing on issues about compliance and we've been assisting. I like to think that we can take some credit in the fact that compliance staff are now seriously taking Garth Bruen's contributions and acting upon them and responding to them professionally. And ICANN's Complaint Staff has been very good about this and I look forward to more activity like this.
I like to think we can take some credit for it, but actually I don't think we can. Still it's nice to be involved with this and making sure that this is being looked after. So between this the white paper and our interesting conflict of interest issues those are the things The Future Challenges Group is working on and I'll leave it at that. We have other things on the wiki and I invite people to go there for the rest. Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Evan.
Jean Jacques Subrenat: This is Jean Jacques. Could I add a word?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes Jean Jacques please the floor is yours.
Jean Jacques Subrenat: Thanks. I was dropped from the call, but the operator just called me back. So in addition to what Evan said I think that we should try to keep the calendar we had talked about in San Jose which is to have The Future Challenges Working Group approved the Draft R3 which is the paper on ICANN and improving ICANN and if that is cleared by the working group then to present it to the full ALAC in the coming weeks.
In case the idea remains that we should have it published as an ALAC statement of position before the Prague meeting so that it can be thoroughly discussed at Prague.
The other thing that I wanted to say is that we've had some very good comments and in fact editorial work by several people counting Rinalia did a very good job recently of rewriting some parts. So many thanks to them as well as two years ago I thought was quite participated a bit earlier. Thanks.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Jean Jacques and well done for all the work that is going on at the moment in The Future Challenges Working Group. And we have another working group that has just started, in fact it's a Taskforce and that's the Technology Taskforce and I'll ask Dev to say a few words about this please. Dev Anand Teelucksingh?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Thank you. Well the call for membership in the At-Large Technology Taskforce should be going out hopefully by the end of this week and several members during the Costa Rica meeting have approached and said that they'll be interested in joining the Technology Taskforce. But once we've issued the formal call to all the regions and get some more volunteers we'll probably have our first meeting probably sometime in the first week of May.
I have the draft text for the call and I'll just post that in the chat and one of the things that you also was looking at, was looking at the At-Large Social Media Outreach Strategy and working with staff to develop and implement that strategy in the most sufficient manner.
I think I'll probably just stop there and that's it.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Dev and may I now ask whether we've managed to get Cheryl Langdon Orr back online?
Heidi Ullrich: Olivier this Heidi and unfortunately we have not been able to get her back online.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I hope that things are okay in her part of the world with the torrential rains that she has received sometimes and communication can be hard.
Perhaps we'll then move to the next item of agenda and if you could please let me know when she comes back online. It's particularly important to have a word or two about the At-Large Improvements Taskforce and also the Rules of Procedure Working Group and the ALAC Metrics Sub-committee.
Item #9 on our agenda is the At-Large Prague Meeting Development. I was hoping that we could perhaps move this to our next ALAC meeting. Heidi what's you feeling on this?
Heidi Ullrich: We could do that, yes. In the meantime if the Chairs of the RALOs for the Secretariat as well as the Chairs of the Working Group could you please let At-Large staff know whether you would like a meeting. Most of you already have, but those who have not would you please confirm.
The deadline for the meeting confirmation form is the 3rd of May and At-Large or the meeting staff have indicated that there will be no exceptions past that deadline. So it is really important that we at least know the day and time of the meetings that are being requested. Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay. Thank you very much Heidi for this and now we can move to item #10 for information, The Re-instatement of The Public SO and AC Sessions during the Prague ICANN Meetings.
I have actually spoken about this a little bit earlier. What's happened since I spoke about this is that Matt has linked to the wiki page from the main agenda on the wiki. So if you have that on your page and it's not linked yet you can refresh your page and you can see this.
But since I spoke about this earlier and asked for everyone to suggest sessions for the Prague ICANN Meetings perhaps can we move to the next agenda item which is #11, ALAC Policy Issues to be part of the Policy Webinar and I ask staff to say a few words about this please.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes. In fact Olivier in order to save time I can take both item #11 and #12 which are somewhat related.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Absolutely please go ahead, Item #12 being Updating the ALAC Top 10 Policy Issues.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, correct. So let everyone know that for the first time the ALAC Policy Issues will be a subject of the Policy Webinar that is given about a month prior to each ICANN Meeting. So we will be setting up a wiki page for topics for particular policy statements that we would like staff to discuss on this webinar.
And secondly one issue that we are thinking about that would be a good issue to discuss on this webinar for ALAC is the Top 10 Policy Issues. Now I've hyperlinked 2008 ALAC Policy Issues and since that's been several years of debate now one suggestion would be if we could do a survey to update the Top 10 Policy Issues. I think that's it Olivier.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Heidi. So next we are on item #13, Updating of the At-Large Website and with the Next Steps. As you know the www.atlarge.icann.org is an absolute –
Heidi Ullrich: Work in progress.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: And certainly what Heidi has just added to my sentence was not what I was going to say and however the auto censoring process took place and you didn't hear what I said.
Now what happened is that there has been a meeting with the ICANN Web and IT people and we are now in a process of working on this website and having it completely remodeled from scratch with the help of Scott Pinzon. And it looks as though this will be a long-term project but we are going to effectively remodel the whole thing from the beginning.
The next steps, well we are already assuring a call for volunteers to make a part of a small team on our side in order to be able to bring forward some suggestions, etc. Are there any steps that I'm forgetting in addition to this Heidi? I've know you made notes on this.
Heidi Ullrich: Very quickly IT already changed internally. There will be interviews carried out by the Communication Team with some of the top ICANN or At-Large users of the At-Large site, so one suggestion was to identify those users Olivier.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, thank you Heidi. Alan you put your hand up, you have the floor.
Alan Greenberg: I did. I've been very vocal over the last number of years when I can't find things and the things are a mess and I want to say today for the first time I found the ALAC Meeting Agenda in a logical way with a logical path and pointers to other meetings that I might have been interested in. It's not complete yet, but it's infinitely better than it was so thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Alan and yes credit has to be given where credit is due. Matt has been working extensively to rearrange the community wiki pages which hold our agendas and he's done a jolly good job of it. So thanks very much Matt for all the work you're doing.
I know that every time you have 3 or 4 minutes to spare you end up rearranging things and making them a little bit better than what they were a few minutes earlier, one bit at a time.
So hopefully in a years’ time we will have a fully functional community wiki that will be easy to navigate through, but also will have a fully functional ALAC website for newcomers and people who visit the ALAC for the first time to actually find information about us and not information that dates back to 2009 and earlier.
We have two more things on our agenda, The Next Beginners Guide and then Any Other Business. I gather we still haven't managed to get hold of Cheryl. If we haven't I'll say a few words before we close about the At-Large Improvement and the Rules of Procedure and the ALAC Metrics if we haven't found her by that time.
Next Beginners Guide please.
Heidi Ullrich: Olivier this is Heidi, just one minute. We've been communicating with Scott and Lynn Lipinski in the Communications Department. They do need a Table of Contents for the next guide and one suggestion was to work with the [inaudible 02:18:01] At-Large Community Taskforce which recommendation I believe is [inaudible 02:18:05] 13 has on it or includes a guide for customers and end-users. So we'll be working with that group as well as the RRR Group on possible topics for that guide. And again the aim is to have that completed by Ad Hoc. Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, thank you very much Heidi. Any questions or comments on this from the floor? I realize several people have to leave soon and we are way over time, so thanks for this update and it's great to see more Beginners Guides being drafted and the input from the At-Large community being sought. It's very important.
If you do have a point of view about this please voice this as soon as possible. I see that Oksana is mentioning, "How can I be involved in the Beginners Guide?"
Is there a wiki page on this Heidi?
Heidi Ullrich: No, but that might be a very good idea. So we can do that, but the issue is that we do need the Table of Contents rather quickly. So we can set the wiki page up and have comments but they will really be needed by the end of the week.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Please and please soon as the wiki page is up also send a request to the At-Large community for comments on this for input.
Okay thank you and now we're over to item #15, Any Other Business. Now I note that Cheryl had other business to mention and she did mention it a little bit earlier about the reorganization of the agendas so that things are not scattered around if that was correct.
We still haven't got Cheryl on the line?
Heidi Ullrich: Correct, we don't have any information.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, so then let's just spend a couple of minutes just on the update from the At-Large Working Groups.
The At-Large Improvements Taskforce has been going through the full set of recommendations of the At-Large improvements and those were a follow-up interim report which was given over to the Structural Improvements Committee of ICANN during the Costa Rica meeting. The finalization of the final report should take place in Prague with the FICC being told about this or given the final report in Prague.
I understand a lot of the work has been now completed. The work which has not been completed is firmly in hand and sometimes in the hand of working groups that have been created. So progress is very good on this.
I'm not sure would staff have any further information on this as well that I haven't mentioned?
Heidi Ullrich: No Olivier. I think you mentioned everything. Thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, thank you. And then the ALAC Rules of Procedure Working Group, now that's just started. We had our first call yesterday and it was very well attended. It was actually a joint call with also volunteers taking part in the ALAC Metrics Sub-committee. Of course the Rules of Procedure and the Metrics are closely linked together and that is why Cheryl Langdon Orr is currently Chairing both of these work groups and the subcommittee of the work group.
I really urge all the people involved in that working group to work hard on this. It's very important that we have rules of procedures that make us work better in an easier way and more efficiently I guess. We are evolving and our voices being listened to more and more, so some of those Rules of Procedures are somehow obsolete.
As far as the Metrics is concerned well not very much needs to be said about this. We haven't had a call yet. There is one next week. I believe it is next or the week after, but progress is being made on both of these working groups.
And that pretty much closes our complete call. Any other business back to item #15? Going once, going twice?
Well I'm hoping that we manage to get news from Cheryl soon. I'm a little concerned about this, but I thank all of you for and during this about two and a half hours of calls. We were scheduled for two hours originally. We spent two and a half hours.
Thanks very much to all of you. It's been a very productive call, so well done and again thanks to everyone who has worked so much in Costa Rica and also since the Costa Rica meeting.
It's really fantastic to see people working like this together and it's a true demonstration of the [inaudible 02:23:52] they call the model works at least in our part of ICANN.
Thanks very much to everyone and I'll speak to you soon on another call I guess and the rest of the week and the forthcoming weeks.
This meeting is now adjourned. Bye-bye.
[End]
