ALAC Telcon
Long-form Minutes
Participants: Jacqueline , Annette, Hong, Wendy, Mohammed, Izumi, Cheryl, Vittorio, Siavash, José, Carlos, Hawa
Apologies: Alan
Absent: Alice
Minutes prepared by: ICANN At-Large Staff
Meeting called to order 1.34pm
Jac – is agenda accepted? Or do we have items we need to add on.
Wendy – I tried to add on a few items ?? online conversation, to raise both the Top 10 issues and resource that we wanted to ask from staff.
Jac – top 10 issues, was there a particular?
Wendy – yes, earlier in the month I had asked for a survery of the Transfer Away Fees and had gotten various onlist conversations
Jac – will add to policy
Jac – anybody else got anything else to add?
Jac – Susie are you still there? Carlos says he had some trouble with his phone and can the operator call him now
Susie – ok and Siavash has sent an email. Ok one moment
Jac – adoption of minutes of previous meeting
Wendy – I haven’t seen them so can’t look to adopt them
Jac – has anyone seen the minutes? Do people want to postpone and move on until people have a chance to look at it?
?? – I think the minutes are pretty lengthy. Can we just have a 1 page summary – up to rest of the members – but could have just the items, pros and cons and conclusions
Vittorio – we also have the recordings
Jacq – I agree
Wendy – I agree but I would oppose getting rid of the long minutes
Jac – how about a short pull out decision of action made and below that a full description.
??? – proposed
Wendy – seconded
Annette – as long as it’s the same day that we receive it. The short version – right after the call, 2 hours later.
Jac - Same day short summary With later long form minutes. This will stay the same.
Action items from last meeting
Issues report
Wendy – why has it taken 3 months to get this tentatively asked for when we voted on the March call to get this done immediately.
Jac - there was a lot of discussion about the issues report with Maria re the format, how to send it and who to send it to , Alan sent an email , copied to us, to the Gnso asking for people to come in on the issues report with us as there is a better chance of getting a PDP if we have more support than we did
Wendy – we’re making ourselves look imcompetent when in Sao Paulo we said we had asked for an issues report and in March we voted for one and now we are only tentatively taking the steps to ask whether other people support
Jac – we are developing a document to request, we’re not taking tentative steps, we just want other constituencies to join in on that
Wendy - it doesn’t require a complex document, just a 2 line email. We voted in March to do this.
Vittorio – are we allowed to ask for an issues report without going to the gnso council?
Jac – send the note to the gnso in the format Maria gave us requesting the issues report, saying these are the issues, this is how it affects people etc, but at the same time copy to the staff and gnso will transmit to staff. There is no vote or anything - that is Alan’s action item
?? – Wendy can you clarify exactly what we voted on? As I didn’t think that it was voted on.
Wendy – yes called for a vote on requesting the issues report to do everything that ALAC can to start a PDP and it was approved with no objections by the ALAC. I take that as a vote to go forward immediately
Wendy – I’m getting questions from NA why it’s taking so long
Jacqueline – vote was taken on 6th March. Alan’s deadline was 30th April to get document ready to send out he is working on it. He did send an email saying where he was at.
Jac – we need to say this is what we want an issues report on, these are the specific issues that are affecting these people and this is what we would like you to look into, can you do a report that looks into it further. We are supposed to do some research into it.
???? – if you read the minutes of March. There is no clear record of us having taken a vote on this.
Wendy – well they’re not complete as I specifically made sure that that was in there as there has been so much confusion over this point
Jac – Alan is taking the lead, he did send an email saying he wanted response by the other constituencies by the end of this week and hopefully he will have a draft shortly
Letter of apology to European ALAC Candidates – Annette and Vitorrio
Vittorio – I think we might spare the letter of apology if we still have the process for nominations for the EURALO I did apologise to the 2 in Lisbon and explained why, if we want a formal letter we can
Annette – I think we are now in the procedure of nominations so it’s ok
Proposal to hire Jean –
Jac – postpone to 24th April when Nick returns. Susie to ask Nick and send note to the list
Liaison reports – done on the list, including Wendy’s
Jacq – can everyone join it?
Wendy – yes, everyone can join for the weekly conference. We should send to all of our lists (whois)
Introduction by new members
Cheryl – Internet Society of Australia, APRALO voted me to 2 year post, come from a non technical background, I am a user of the internet I run several internet dependant businesses in my non volounteer world, director of internet soc of Australia,
Mohamed – chairman of Sudan internet society, NGO that is working to increase awareness of internet usages in social/economic development in the country. Have been involved in ICANN since 2001.
Annette – did I understand correctly that you have several functions at ICANN?
Mohammed – yes. Gcnso and also I have been a member of some committees in IDN – IDN guideline drafting committee.
Regional reports?
APAC
Izumi – not much following Lisbon
Cheryl – just managed to get ourselves formed although the commentary that some of our members made towards domain tasting and domain monetization made should be noted
Africa
??? – there is going to be a meeting at ??? ????? some members of AFRALO will be there and will try to get more organisations interested
Europe – Vittorio, there has been a lot of discussion mostly because in Lisbon we agreed to start the process of nomination to elect the ?? RALO and reps , we had a deadline of april 15th , but some people that were not in Lisbon wanted to move it to May 1st. But if we so that it’s unlikely we will be able to complete the process in time to have the people attend San Juan. By the way we need to let everyone know that they need to move on getting visas. I tried to mediate and suggested 22nd . 1 nomination has come in for ALAC member. We will see what comes in in the next few days.
Annette – I suggested 1st may as it’s holiday time now , people who were not in Lisbon would have no chance at all to take part without moving the deadline. The problem of the visa can be taken care of if all of those that are candidates apply for a visa anyway. We will be able to come up with nominations for the beginning of May-- we will have a new board for the EURALO,
Wendy 14:11 – sorry I got dropped from the call
Latin America – working on getting organised for the Genearl Assembly in San Juan and getting input on various statements that we’ll be making on the policy matters. We need to translate everything and then translate back. The process we use is we get the information that ???? the ALS reps for their ALS and they take it back to their organisation and then send it back to us and we compile it. That’s what we have so far
North America – still interested in who has requested the f2f meeting apart from an ICANN meeting, as far as I can see everyone who has spoken out on the public lists say they would prefer to meet when there are people there who actually have influence over ICANN.
Jac – I haven’t got that info from Nick yet
Wendy – it’s my impression that there will be a vote against holding this meeting in May and I hope ICANN will respect our interests in that and not spend money sending people out.
Jac – Denise says that if the region don’t want it, it will be cancelled
Vittorio – I was puzzled that a meeting was called without consulting the region
Jac – that was partly my fault as I did my report early as I was going to be away so it came out in the report before the invitation. The invitation went out in English this morning and Jacob is doing this afternoon in French.
Wendy – the region does not want this, it’s a very vocal minority that do. IF it’s a group of Canadians that have been recruited by Jacob they should not be able to unilaterally decide this.
Jac – if the majority don’t want to have this meeting it won’t take place. What do you suggest?
Wendy – sending a message to the list saying that if the majority don’t want to go it won’t happen.
Policy Matters
Liaisons Working Groups
??? – Rudi just sent an email he is willing to serve on WHOIS
Annette – don’t we have Wendy?
Jac – Wendy said the more the merrier. Wendy you still want to be on right?
Wendy – everyone should join
Jac – Cheryl you have been nominated for Gtld.
Wendy – I second that
Cherly – I’m happy to do that
Hong – still happy to do Idn but if other colleagues want to join me or replace me. There is now another issue, Gnso is now organising another working group. Working Group for Protection of Rights of Others???
Wendy – I would be happy to join that
No Objections from the group
Jac - Gnso Pro group Wendy new liaison
Vittorio – I sent some comments?
Jac – I sent some to the mailing list and have back 3 comments so far
Siavash? - we sent the comments to the social text
Annette - Please do both, send to list and social text
Jac – when is the deadline for comments on the terms of reference?
Izumi?? – 27th or 24th??
Siavash – you were selecting members for liaison offices did you talk about Ccnso
Jac – no, I forgot to put on list
Siavash – I am the present liaison but am happy not to do if someone else want to – eg Mohammed who is already on CCnso Council. So maybe we don’t need another liaison
Jac – are you suggesting Mohammed take over from you?
Annette – I am irritated that you can be on more than one committee. Did you discuss this in Lisbon. It’s new to me that you can be a member of one committee and other committees and on working groups
Jac – no we didn’t
Vittorio – as far as I know you cannot be on the board if you are a member of a council of a supporting organisation that’s the only rule
Annette – so you could be on all committees at the same time
Vittorio – yes
Wendy – Except the NomCom
Mohamed – ???? We have been talking about it in African ALAC – most of the comments have been you can be a member in a different supporting organisation as long as you are not in ??? position
Vittorio – as long as it has been discussed in the region it’s fine. It will be different in each region
Cheryl – in some of the ALSes in the AP region where governments have mandate at least 50% representation from civil society it’s going to be hard to avoid
Jac – do you want to continue
Siavash – I should be in until the Winter meeting but I’d be happy if Mohamed wanted to be it
Annette – but we could have both
Mohamed – I would be willing to help
Jac – we want to have siavash and mohammed
Wendy – top 10 issues, I’ve started up a page, it would be good to give a report back to na and the general community as to what we see as the most important issues. Suggest we send round to community to see if they have additional comments/??
Jac – deadline?
Wendy - 1 week to do it – next Tuesday
Jac – how are we going to prioritise it
Wendy we could vote on items.
Jac – we have ones that came up several times by different people and others that didn’t so could prioritise like that
Vittorio – or practically it will be the ones that people are interested in working on as we’re all volounteers that will go forward. Or maybe once we have a list try to find people that will be interested in working on them
Jac – maybe the people that bring up the issues will be the ones interested in working on getting a research paper started etc
Wendy – I suggest people go on the wiki page and add issues they think are important, that will help us determine which are a priority
Cheryl - add your initials if you are interested in working on them.
Wendy – next Tuesday, then close list and send round to community to see if there are any comments
Problem with service
Research – Transfer away fees
Jac – how do we want to proceed
Wendy – I move that we request that staff compile a cross section of registrars and transfer away fees that they charge
Jac – so basically we want to list all registrars – do you want resellers as well?
Wendy – it’s the registrars that are setting the transfer away fees. that’s a separate problem
Jac – the resellers are trying to add on their own fees. So they would give the registrar the fee they ask for but then they may ask for fees on top again.
Wendy – if someone wants to authorise that I will draw up a research task ????
Jac – Domain registration policies and fees. There’s 2 things or 1 thing which is registrar fees and policy
Wendy – it’s just information gathering because we’re told this is a market and the market is sorting itself out. The first things is – what’s happening in the markert and second question to do in a more difficult survey is how much do individuals know about the market
Jac – I saw a report today which would be interesting to look into for us
Wendy – I move we request staff research Top Registrar transfer away fees and domain exploration fees and redemption policies
Seconded by???
No objections
Jac – spoke to Kieren and he has given ALAC blog space
Jac – is anyone interested in contributing to the ALAC blog? It seems to be a different way of getting people involved.
Vittorio – I think we already have 2 websites and so many mailing lists
Annette – I agree it’s getting too much, we have to find a way of concentrating activities. I don’t oppose using the blog space on ICANN but we have to find a way of concentrating the activities
14:46 – Jose joined
Jac – we have 2 mailing lists per region. An als list and a discuss list
Wendy – NA would like to get rid of als list just discuss list
Vitorrio – same for Europe, except some ALSes complained saying they received official messages on discuss list
Jac – if we get rid of als list then there’s no discussion as to wheter it’s official
Africa and APAC – agree just have one
Jac – do we want to dump the als list
Cheryl – if we’re looking at grassroots input the terminology of a title discuss is more welcoming and opening for any internet user to have their say via an ALS
Jac- we are going to get rid of als for all regions and just have discuss
Annette – has to be an explanation if there’s something with a deadline so people know what to pick. Sometimes people add important points/deadlines to discussions that already exist Should be some sort of introduction/education on how to write a mailing concerning a certain date or deadline. Or just keep als list for announcing things with deadlines. People are overwhelmed, they could easily miss something that is important
Wendy – suggest we put deadline into the subject when it’s time sensitive
Jac – staff information
Susie – not so far as I know, only setting up the next vote
Jac – how many do we have outstanding
Susie – 6 not including the Communica and YIELD which are being dealt with seperatly. This takes us to the end of April. We are still awaiting regional advice on some of these
Jac – Susie send out an email to ask for regional advice. How long do we need? A week?
Susie – you would normally have more than a week but they are overdue now
Jac – Europe how long do you need?
Annette – well a lot of people are on vacation so 2 weeks would be better.
Jac - Regional advice by 24th. Open vote to 1st may
Agreed
Susie – set vote up for those that are due in May too?
Jac – whatever we have DD for
Susie – I will go through all that we have information for and send out. If there are any that there are issues with someone will tell me actually we still need more information on this candidate so please don’t include in the vote.
Jac – John was on the budgeting committee with me and Annette, we need a replacement. Any volounteers??/ nobody???
Cheryl – oh ok. I will do it.
Jac – we take the work plan that’s in the process of developing along with the issues-- send off what we want to do saying this is what we need and then they chop it down.
Cherly – there are standard procedures already in place?
Jac – yeh. No objections to Cheryl
Jac – san juan preparations – Wolfgang suggested a workshop on Tlds and anything else? The wiki page is up so people can just add to the wiki page. Would be good to try to get our workshops in earlier so we can start to get people excited.
Jac – It seemed to me in Lisbon that we had a lot of administrative things going on in the meetings that were not really interesting for people to come to the meetings. we should move our admin to 1 day earlier and then when we have our public meetings we should just discuss issues. Anyone got any comments?
Siavash – try to schedule early enough and not conflict with what other people have to attend it the liaisons
Jac – if we have say 2 or 3 big workhops we put them in really early and then people can see they’re there already and so conflicts shouldn’t arise
Jac- the wiki page is there, so far there is the workshop on Gtlds and one on Registrar/registrant issues. The status of the PDP and what we’ve got from the issues report Please add to or substract on the wiki
Vittorio – draft rules of procedures I sent an email out a couple of hours ago, I collected comments received, I only had comments from siavash and wendy, I exstracted the 7 or 8 points that we need to discuss according to those comments, I assume no one had observations on the rest. and we can go through them here and then have a no objections period for approving it.
Izumi – sorry I just sent mine 30 mins ago
Vittorio – I’ve not seen yet. Anyway at least we should be able to sort out some of the issues on here.
1. How long to appoint people for, we had 1 or 2 yr terms. Both siavash and wendy said 1 year. Any opinions? All agree 1 year.
2. Siavash said we should have fixed terms for working group appointments too. Current draft says that we have 1 year terms for ?? by ?? liaisons but we have open appointments to working groups. You would appoint someone to a working group and they would just continue until it finished. So do we want to appoint now for fixed terms.
Jac – working groups start at odd times.
Vittorio – it could be 1 year after initial appointment it could be at every annual meeting
Jac - It can’t happen at annual meetings as we don’t know what will come up
Vittorio – we will fill them as they come up but then will we have fixed terms?
Siavash – as far as I know these working groups and task forces they should have fixed terms – but if the fixed term lasts very long like 3 years but the person may get tired – or it may run longer than the person’s appointment. Maybe at the end of the first year ask the person if they want to continue.
Annette – What exactly was the proposal Siavash? it makes sense to elect the person for the task rather than a term. So your idea is to take the chance of checking if someone wants to stay on if the task is not finished?
Vittorio – anyway you always have the option to resign
Jac – how about it last for the term for working groups that last less than a year. For ones that last more than a year we reconfirm with the person after a year
Siavash – yes
Vittorio – would it be 1 year from the appointment or everything ??? Because there is a value in doing it altogether
Siavash – it would be 1 year from the start of the working group
Annette – that is too complicated. Then you have to keep in mind when they started, just say whenever that started then a year later then if that year later happens to be a year and a half later who cares. Just take the next year for checking the reappointment.
Vittorio – so it could be the next AGM,
Siavash – the point is some of these may start in the middle of the year
Annette – my proposal was, if the working group starts in the may of this year then we check at the end of next year. Whenever it starts just take a year later
3, Vittorio – ALAC minimum participation requirements (something by siavash) does this make sense for liaisons? Meetings tend to overlap so people who are liaisons may miss meetings. We discussed for Sao Paulo, the idea was to apply to liaisons participation requirements that apply to members. They are not about individual meetings but rather conference calls and showing up to ICANN meetings. It is expected that the will miss a good deal of sessions but this should not prevent them from meeting the minimum requirements.
Siavash – if there’s a conflict, who decides which to attend. We should try to avoid having conflicts If a person consistently doesn’t attend ALAC and goes to the other committee are they sufficiently well informed about what’s going on in ALAC to represent ALAC and vice versa
Jac – say for example there is a Cnso meeting coming up, we should be determining if there are any issues the liaison needs to talk about and we shouldn’t be doing it at the same time as the Cnso meeting. We shouldn’t be debating issues that we want to be put forward in a meeting while that meeting is actually going on. We should organise these things before so that our liaison can go to the meeting ready to discuss what we want them to.
Siavash – in other words you want the committee to decide what the liaison should do, whether they should go to that, be at the ALAC or the other meeting
Jac – No, I think that the liaison should go to the meeting that there’s a liaison for but the ALAC should discuss whatever is relevant for that meeting in advance so that you’re not missing something that’s not relevant to that meeting.
Hong – right for instance this Ccnso meeting normally they have meetings the whole week
Siavash – no it’s 2 days.
Hong – at least 2 WHOLE days. It would be really difficult for Siavash to ??? the conference and that’s if we schedule the ALAC meeting well before these meetings
Vittorio – the only way you can avoid the conflict is by scheduling ALAC meetings for the week before on Saturday/Friday but I guess that would be a bit impractical for people to stay 8 or 9 days even if ICANN wanted to pay for it. we always have a degree of conflict. What I tried to do in Lisbon was to figure out every time what the most important thing was, keep all the meetings of the board with the business constituency ????? because I wanted to be in their meetings ??? when the vote was received I could be there instead of the ALAC meetings. But in terms of rules I think that the fact that liaisons can meet the participation requirements that is written in the rules is just that they should come to the ICANN meetings in general other than participate in all the sessions that ALAC says that ICANN meetings …but about the substance…??
Siavash – I agree with your first point, now talking about the ??? I think historically both the Gnso and CCnso have been holding the meetings all day Tuesday and half of the day on Wednesday. If we avoid these conflicts then these two liaisons will be off the hook. But then I guess the board meetings are more complicated, I dunno what we do about that.
Jac – leave the liaisons with the minimum participation requirements for ALAC that is show up to however many ICANN meetings per year and participate in however many, or attempt to participate because if your phone gets dropped 6 times and you’re trying your best to participate …don’t think you can be penalised.
Vittorio – Ok so we keep the requirements and try to figure out the substance.
Jac – Eligibility of ALAC liaisons?
4. Vittorio - who should be eligible to serve as ALAC representative, as officers I mean, as liaisons, and working group members, and of course..the current draft says that the chair and vice chair have to be current ALAC members. For all the other positions there is no requirement for this, the ALAC can appoint people who are not members of the ALAC, which is what we’ve been doing in the past for example with Bret Fausett and then Siavash’s proposal is that you restrict to either current members or former members that were past of the last meeting???
Siavsash – yes I guess the rational for that is that if somebody is away from what is going on in ALAC, current ALAC thinking I don’t know how they can really represent the ALAC thinking into where they are liaison to. if you have been away from ALAC for ages how can you represent them well. Also didn’t want to open it to campaigns from outside to appoint somebody as liaison, if we leave this entirely open we may face campaigns to appoint a particular person as liaison, a person who may not be connected to ALAC and then we may get into some difficult issues.
Jac – the flip side was that there are only 15 people on the ALAC and we’re all volounteers so might be good to open to at least ALS reps as it spreads the work.
??? – I tend to agree with that idea
Vittorio – the idea of the rules?? was rather not to take any position but rather to leave it open so at any specific time if the ALAC needs to make an appointment it can decide if it wants to appoint a member or someone from the outside, I mean the rules were not formerly strict, but on the other hand if you write in the rules that you only have to pick current or former ALAC members then if you want to do the other thing then you are stuck. But I see the point of Siavash in terms of external pressure, there were some people ??society people??such as I think Janette Hoffman or Wolfgang? (Volcan?) saying if they’d known that someone other than ALAC members could have been nominated maybe they could have tried to push for other people, and I understand that it may be better to prevent that. But in the end it’s always the committee that has to make nominations and vote.
Annette – Actually this is what I tried to explain to them, I think it is absolutely to the committee to decide, and I think also it is in the interests of the committee that they know the people, second also that we try to save money and resources and on the one hand I agree with Jacqueline it is good to spread the workload on different shoulders but on the other hand it also makes sense to have people in the committee and let them if they are willing to, take the workload, it is very efficient for us to have less people to get to know and talk to. So the smaller the group the better if they are willing to. I think we should leave it open but oppose the campaign stuff. I absolutely think the LAC meeting in Brasil when we decided to have a Board Liaison it is up to the ALAC to decide who they are going to elect and of course they can take into account other persons but there shouldn’t be a campaigning. If there are people within the ALAC that’s fine. I think that is always a positive …it is good for the ALAC to know those people, I wouldn’t make it a duty…
Siavash – I am willing to go along with this. As long as there’s this understanding. And we keep reminding ourselves of this understanding.
Vittorio – if you want we could add one sentence saying the person should be familiar with the ALAC and it’s past workings
Annette – Bret was not in the ALAC and I think he did a wonderful job.
Jac – how about we don’t have any requirements we take expressions of interest from people and ALAC decides. So we can sit down and say – yeh this person has been involved or this person has been around and we actually sit down and decide so we don’t put in anything, we just say that we can take whoever we want to be liaisons. People CAN submit expressions of interest but the ALAC is not bound to take…
Annette – but if you do that and you write it down then you’re working in the interests of those people wanting to campaign. If you just don’t put anything like that..it is just the way it is
Izumi-- I’m a little bit opposed to just denying the campaigns. I understand what happened last time but ?? I think the campaigns are not all bad. If they have great input in policy areas or issues, that will help the energy?? What they meant was more of a transparency or (Jacqueline said??) that if we submit a call, we sometimes (seem?) like it is a done deal or an insiders decision which is I think is really avoid. Especially not only with ?????? people but with the ALSes joining and only ???? can become and ALAC committee member (leaving???) the rest of the ALSes out there..I think that some kind of ideas should be there to have some more procedures. Of course the final decision is the ALAC’s job but if if we set up the procedure correctly I think we can avoid some of the misunderstandings.
Jac – yes, if we just say you can submit an expression of interest ‘I’m very interested in this issue, and I’m willing to serve in whatever capacity, whether it be a liaison or whatever then we can sit down and say ok, this person’s from Africa, this person has experience and would like to be liaison on this working group and then we can decide how we want to do it. it’s not like it’s a vote so that the Europeans vote and send a name, that kind of campaigning, it’s just people say yeh I’m interested and then we sit down and decide.
Vittorio – how it is written now in the process of election there is an election called ??? to open the process, listing the open positions …I guess that’s more or less what you meant ..so you could circulate that and people would be able to respond even if nominations are restricted to current members to nominate.
Jac - right
Annette – Izumi for the clear visitation??? And transparency of the procedure I think the most important thing is the timeline and everyone knows in advance that this position will be reappointed. So I think it is more important to say ok we have 6 weeks or I dunno…a certain timeline…is that in there Vittorio?
Vittorio – Absolutely, the reason why it has taken so long is that it is very detailed. On all the steps of the selection process so that you have nothing to argue about, you should do it this way or that way. So the timeline starts I think one month before the AGM ??? then you have 14 days for nominations ??? for the rest
???? --there could be some sort of general selection criteria for example persons with past experience or knowledge in the subject area and capacity to work with us so that we are not making a random selection. …just based on certain objective selection criteria
Vittorio – yeh well we could have a section like in the ICANN byelaws that says that people should meet some criteria if we want.
Siavash – If we don’t put any kind of statement to the effect that this person has to be somehow close to ALAC this may look like…the default situation would be considered to be the one of somebody being elected from outside necessarily.
?? – Right
Siavash – Because if you just put out the questionnaires you know, and then you elect somebody from inside ALAC then people will say ‘oh look at these selfish guys, why did they put out these questionnaires …you know if they wanted to elect somebody from themselves’. Now it seems to me that we should make a statement that normal situation is that somebody from ALAC will represent ALAC BUT the position is open for other people, you know,
Annette – For example, within this telephone conference, we just decided to have a person on GTld, on, you know, so we would have, this would have been a big business right…
Jac – yes it would have
Annette – yeh I think it’s a good point Siavash, I think really it should not look as if it’s something like a broad community open thing, we are really happy if we have people from within, from inside and also it’s money saving.
Jac – ok, so we go for, if we don’t have somebody from inside then we ask for people from outside?
Vittorio – I think
Annette – I don’t know
Vittorio – you can leave it open, if you want you can add, I can draft a section on criteria that says possibly it should be someone from alac or close to or familiar with ALAC and so on.
Annette – yeh that will be great
Sivash – if you could make a proposal then we could, you know..
Jac - Ok
Vittorio – Ok so let’s say I will work on a section for that
Cheryl – Vittorio, I represent The Internet Society of Australia in telecommunications consumer advocacy for my many sins, and something that that space in Australia has done in the last 12 months is put out basically a registry which was an open call of expression of interest for people to put forward, or organisations to put forward their nominees and their bonafides as to why they should be on the really restricted tender list for ELIs ?? so if you like I could forward you some of that information for perhaps review as well while you’re doing this process.
Vittorio – if you like certainly, I think it could be interesting to have a sort of registry of experts or something like that, I mean people that say I’m interested…actually, what we’ve been doing in the past is that usually these people are already active like say in mailing lists so you already know, you already have a pool of people active in…
Cheryl – it’s normally the usual suspects
Jac – yeh
Cheryl – in the interests of being open and inclusive there are mechanisms that we’ve at least been experimenting here in Australia with and I’m more than happy to send those forward to you for inspiration.
Vittorio – yes please and by the way I’ve heard that even the board has been wondering sometimes whether there should be a list of people that are interested in participating in policy processes so it is interesting anyway so please do send it.
Cheryl – Maybe we can teach them how to do it one time??
Vittorio – yeh
Jac – Ok
5. Vittorio – Ok so, next item on the list which is another suggestion by Siavash – that people should have a limit on the number of positions they should be allowed to apply for so he suggested that people should be nominated for at most 2 positions at the same time and I think it’s reasonable.
Siavash – Let me qualify this, I only meant the 5 positions of chair, vice-chair and the 3 liaison, liaison to the board, liaison to the Ccnso and liaison to the Gnso, I don’t see any problem with any one of these people or other people being on more than one task force really. I meant these 5 positions.
Vittorio – yeh and there is already something in the rules (in draft??) an incompatability principle so that you cannot be in 2 of these 5 positions at the same time
Siavash – oh ok
Vittorio – but at the same time you are right that if people apply for all them, then we have a problem maybe in the selection process...
Annette – sorry I just got dropped out, where are we now?
Jac – we are just discussing that people shouldn’t be allowed to run for more than 2 positions at the same time.
Vittorio – so I think it’s reasonable to have that limit as well
Annette – Oh come on, keep things as open as possible I’d say
Siavash – I guess I suppose somebody could run for chair and vice-chair at the same time, no problem.
Jac – more than 2, you don’t want to run for chair and vice-chair and all of the liaisons at the same time!
Annette – oh come on..this person won’t get elected right.
Jac – ok
Vittorio – so what do we want to do
Cheryl – I sincerely hope not
Annette – keep it open and if the ALAC team is as crazy to elect a person (laughter)
?? – ok..it’s getting very late for my time. Can we speed it up
Jac?? – yes it is. We’re nearly there
Vittorio – Yeh, 3 more points by Wendy so maybe we can understand quickly – the first one was, actually two of them are about amending the rules and also recalling officers so – The rules say that to to change the rules you need two thirds of the ALAC voting in favour so 10 people, and the same to recall an officer in the middle of a term which should be ??? you need 10 people to vote in favour and what Wendy says is she would like it to be easier so just to go by simple majority if you get a quorum of two thirds I guess or 10 people say voting but simple majority. So..opinions? I mean the reason why it was made a bit hard was because you should only change the rules if almost everyone agrees and similarly to recall you need a strong majority to avoid people trying to recall each other every 3?? months but
Jac – I agree with it being stronger because if you have a two thirds quorum which is 10 and then you have a simple majority of that which would be 6 then you could get removed with a minority of the vote of the committee especially if the vote is called at a time when there’s holidays or people are travelling and unable to attend then you could really …I don’t think it would be as fair.
?? – but two thirds of the quorum
Annette – but if we have 15 people, two thirds quorum is 10 right.
Jac – right
Vittorio – so how it is written now you need 10 people voting for a recall or voting to change the rules..which is what we used to do for the ALS accreditation more or less
Jac – and the other way it would be 6 out of 10 voting to recall or to change the rules
Annette – yeh
Jac – 6 out of 15 voting to recall or to change the rules
Cheryl – that’s too low
Siavash – I took two thirds meaning 7
Vittorio – I didn’t ??? I was referring to Wendy’s
Jac – two thirds of the two thirds quorum would be 7 people which is still less than half, it’s still a minority of the actual committee members
Siavash - ?? is that they should really vote
Cheryl – what about 50% + 1 of the so you’d need at least…6…8
Vittorio – but anyway, the reason that I went for 10 is that even if there were 8 people in favour or not in favour of changing the rules I think it would be a bit of a too small majority to change
Siavash – how about three quarters of those voting, 75%
Jac – 75% would be 2/3rds quorum.
?? – not two thirds, 75% of those who voted which gives you know a relatively higher threshold for…??
Jac – what’s the quorum then?
Vittorio – 7.5 so 8
?/? - well what’s the quorum in general?
Siavash – two thirds. So it would be 7.5 so 8, we have to round it ..
Jac – which would still give us a possibility of 7 – 8
Siavash – if you + 1 it would be 9 because it’s 8.5
Jac – 7.5, so it would be 8.5, yeh ok. 9. Ok
Vittorio – so do we want to go for 9 votes
Siavash – yeh if it’s 10 to 9 I guess that would satisfy everyone
?? – If full members are the then fine, but think of if one is not there or one has resigned or has not been appointed or something, we may not have always 15, so that’s my worry.
Jac – so 50%+1 would make that work then.
Cheryl – yes it would, regardless ?? of the valid votes, you have a quorum and a 50%+1, in other words a simple majority of the valid vote.
Vittorio – so we got back to 6? No I’m lost
Annette – I am lost too
Jac – ok, what we want is a simple majority of the entire ALAC, with a quorum of two thirds.
Cheryl – yes
Jac – so not a simple majority of the voters
Vittorio – the objection would be that if everyone votes then 8-7 seems to me too small a majority to change the rules. So it should be…
Jac – it’ll be 8.5 so it will be 9. so 9-6??
Annette – why is it 8.5?
Siavash – quorum would be 10 people right, quorum is 10 people right,
Jac – right
Siavash – so half of that would be 5 plus 1 that’s 6. So that means 6 people could change the rules
Vittorio – yeh, maybe ??? 75% in two thirds of quorum, maybe it could be a middle point because it’s 75%, basically only 8 people if 10 votes and it’s more if more people vote
Siavash – 8 people, that makes it 8
Annette – excuse me, just a question for understanding, the 75% was not out of the total but of the minimum quorum. This is exactly the difficulty I have, if all the people vote, if all 15 vote then the quorum is higher, right?
Vittorio – yeh, that’s how I got it
Siavash – then in that case you need 12 people,
Jac – how about we send out an email that explains each of the proposals really clearly with the actual numbers that it would be and then we can decide on that online. Because it might be easier to see what we are talking about if we actually see them numbers in front of you in an email
Vittorio – ok
Jac – so we can put that to the list
Annette – but is there a sort of understanding that 9 people would be fine and we just need a good explanation for that?
?? – I really need to drop soon so really need to wind up
Vittorio – ok, the last item was the proposal to shorten the no objection period on motions from 7 to 4 days. I had 7 because it seemed reasonable and Wendy proposed to have 4.
Jac – I think that 4 might be difficult given this past weekend for example
Cheryl - ??
Jac – yeh, we’ve just had 4 days of holiday so if somebody had proposed something on Thursday it would have automatically gone through today without people being able to check over Easter public holiday.
Cheryl – I couldn’t even get anything done between Thursday midnight, well actually after 3.30 on Thursday until today so people I paid from my business after 3 o’clock on Thursday didn’t get their money until this morning. So I mean, I think 4 days is a little bit too short.
Jac – I vote we stay with 7.
Cheryl – 7
Vittorio – ok, fine so, I didn’t see Izumi’s suggestions so I will have a look at them and I will send a proposal for the criteria and a recap of the different voting systems
Jac – and we’ve been on for 2 hours, the only things left would be ombudsman report which we have to reply to by end of april, if we can get some volounteers to draft something. – I’m willing to sit down and work on that but I don’t know if anybody else wants to
Vittorio – yeh well keep me in the loop anyway..and ?? help you soon?
Jac – ok. And then I think we will
Izumi – Izumi, I will participate
Jac – ok. We’ll put together something and then send it out to everybody this week and then we can agree on it and send it of to the board as an official response by the end of next week which would be well in time for the deadline which is the 24th
Siavash? – ok
Jac – and last is the ALS applications process which I think we may have to put off to the next telephone conference. The only things that would have a problem with that would be applications from Telecommunities Canada, Comumica-ch and the infamous Yinternet. Telecommunities Canada sent out an email saying ‘we think we are qualified and go ahead and vote on us please because we’ve explained everything we need to explain’
Izumi? – Is there any strong reason why we can’t take a vote now?
Annette – we have to change the rules right
Jac – the only reason is according to our current rules, says individuals are only observing members and not actual member members they would be automatically denied.
Annette – I have a difficulty with that, I mean we denied so many organisations because of that. That means that we would have to go, last year we denied many organisations because we think they got more organisational members than individuals
Jac – that’s true
Annette – so we would have to write to them and invite them to reapply.
Jac – reapply yeh
Annette – I think that is really a difficult discussion. So the whole thing would have to change
Jac – so we start discussing it online and then discuss it in the next teleconference.
Annette – yeh
Siavash – ok
?? – so we have to explain to these pending ALSes the situation
Annette – yeh right, that would have to change the bylaws for that
Jac – ok. So that’s it?
Izumi – just one thing, sorry, my draft on the Domain Tasting and Monetization.
Jac – right
Izumi - ??? strong objection about including monetization it’s very difficult to establish a strong argument so for efficiency’s sake I would propose to draft a ???? monetization for the time being and try to conclude with domain tasting.
Siavash – sounds good yeh
Cheryl – I think that’s a very good idea and if you wish to discuss that later I’m more than happy to talk about how Australia actually legitimised monetization but under high eligibility criteria
Izumi – right right, what I meant was, we need more study before making any strong proposal, if we are to make any proposal we better make it stronger.
Cheryl – so if we split them and do tasting because it’s clear and do some research on monetization that could be very valid.
Jac – ok
Annette – sorry I have to leave
Jac – ok that’s it now, sorry it took so long
Meeting ended after 2hrs and 7 minutes
call ended 15:37
