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ALAC Teleconference Transcription

January 8, 2008

Legend
Name: First name of member of group
Name?: If we think we might know who's speaking but aren't 100% sure.
Male: Unsure of who's speaking, but know it's a male.
Female: Unsure of who's speaking, but know it's a female.
Name: French 00:29:52 - 0:31:06 We will identify a foreign language with a time code for the beginning and end, so that you can quickly identify those passages. At the top of the transcript, we will advise you of the name(s) of the foreign languages you'll need to search for. For example, some transcripts may contain German, so you'll have to search for "German" instead of "French" to find all the passages. The speaker identification is the same convention as all the others. i.e. If we know the speaker's name we'll include it, otherwise we'll put a question mark after it, or if we can't even guess, then Male, Female or SP.
Translator: If translator actually translates French or German for a participant we will note it as "Translator". It will normally be evident from the dialogue who the translator is translating for. If not, we will include a note with respect to who they are translating for.
O: Operator.
XX joined If the phone system has announced that a particular person has just joined the group it will be shown at the left margin.
cuts out: Audio cuts out for less than 2 seconds. We may have missed something. We do not put this if it's just natural silence where no-one is speaking. We only put this if we can hear that there was briefly a technical problem with the phone line and/or the recording which resulted in temporary loss of sound.
cuts out 2 secs When the audio cuts out for 2 seconds or more we'll show approximately how many seconds were missed. We will most likely have missed something if it cuts out for this long.

Attendance:
Cheryl Langdon-Orr – Meeting Chair
Nick Ashton-Hart – ICANN Staff
Carlos Aguirre
Izumi Aizu
Sébastien Bachollet
Mohamed El Bashir
Beau: Brendler
Veronica Cretu
Hawa Diakite
Alan Greenberg
Annette Muehlberg
Nguyen Thu Hue
José Ovidio Salgueiro
Wendy Seltzer
Fatimata Seye Sylla
Hong Xue

Nick: Nick Ashton-Hart.
silence – 0:01:03 to 0:02:57
O: Good morning. Hawa is joining the call.
Hawa: French – 0:03:01
Nick: Hawa, hello.
Hawa: Hello. It’s Nick?
Nick: C’est moi.
Hawa: Bonjour!
Nick: Bonne année.
Hawa: French – 0:03:13
Nick: laughter
Hawa: How is 0:03:21 your cold now? You are better today?
Nick: Finding yes.
Hawa: Okay, I’m glad.
O: Nick?
Nick: Yes.
O: This is the operator. I’m going to place Hawa into mute mode, so she will be able to hear and the interpreter will also be able to interpret. You will not hear the interpretation. I’ve already instructed the operator that if Hawa would like to speak, they need to hit 7 and their line will open up so that Hawa… the interpreter can speak on Hawa’s behalf.
Nick: Wonderful. And Hawa knows about this?
O: What’s that? Yeah. And I’ve already instructed Hawa to let her interpreter know when she’d like to speak.
Nick: And also if people can IM, then, you know, I can raise it with the chair of the conference… overtalking 0:04:03
O: We’ve got an oper-… We’ve got the operator panel up, so we’ve already… we’ve got a communication going there already. Unfortunately, interpreters don’t use IM, because I know you guys, it’s a big thing for you, but they don’t use it, so we’ve got a workaround.
Nick: Shall I use the… go to 0:04:20 adigo.com, can I get in…?
O: You can. We’ve got an operator already in there controlling that panel.
Nick: I see, yeah, live conference, I see the people who are in.
O: Exactly.
Nick: With subconference, Mohamed El Bashir… So you’ve got the subconference, the main conference, no callers 0:04:40. Okay. I’m not trying to understand this completely, but it’s neat looking. laughter
O: laughter Well, we can do _inaudible_…
Nick: I like the options, though. Those are good.
O: We can do, you know… Obviously at another date and time, we can schedule something to go through and give you some instruction on that as well.
Nick: Yeah, I’m sure it will probably become obvious to me as I look at it a little longer.
O: Hold on one sec.
Nick: Okay.
O: I’m pulling up your 0:05:08 call.
Cheryl?: Hello.
O: You’ll see that Ha-… When you look at the live participants, Nick, Hawa is actually… there is the 3104556501.
Nick: And that’s Hawa?
O: That’s Hawa’s line. I’m going to go ahead and mute her now.
Cheryl: Hello.
Nick: Cheryl, darling.
Cheryl: And how are we all?
Nick: Good. We’re going to see how all the interpretation works. Well, with one language, anyway. Hawa’s on, you’re on, and there’s actually five people on including me and the operator, so…
Cheryl: inaudible 0:05:58 So we’re only three away from _inaudible_.
Nick: _inaudible_…
Cheryl: _inaudible_
Nick: …582… I see phone numbers but not names at the minute.
Cheryl: Okay.
Mohamed: Hello, everyone. It’s Mohamed here.
Cheryl: Hello, Mohamed.
Nick: How are you?
Mohamed: Hello? I’m great, how are you? Happy New Year for all.
Cheryl: Thank you.
pause
Nick: This is quite cool. I can see a whole menu associated with the conference call, something that Verizon always promised me but never worked.
Cheryl: Excellent. Okay.
Nick: I know that’s very boring to all of you, but… laughter Well, it really helps because you can sort of… you can see the audio, so you can see if someone’s generating continuous noise. I think you can. Yeah.
Cheryl: And do you know who’s on yet, or you’ve only got numbers just the same 0:07:37 now?
Nick: At the moment I’ve just got numbers, so I’m not quite… Like I can see me, because I’m coming in from a “33” number, so that’s me.
José: José is here.
Nick: José, hola.
José: How are you?
Nick: Well again, at last.
José: Thank God… overtalking 0:07:59
Nick: And you?
José: Everything’s okay.
Nick: And you’re calling in on country code “58,” right, José?
José: Yes, “58” is Venezuela.
Nick: Okay. I’m just looking at a menu of numbers and not names, so I’m putting names to the numbers.
pause
Nick: Fatimata’s asked for her to be called back in 15 minutes, by the way, just to let you all know.
Veronica: Hello.
Beau: Hello, it’s Beau: Brendler.
Nick: Hey, Beau:.
Veronica: Hi, this is Veronica.
Beau: Morning 0:09:28, how you doing?
Cheryl: Hello, Veronica.
Beau: Happy New Year.
Cheryl: Merry Christmas to you.
Beau: Merry Christmas… overtalking
Veronica: Yeah, thank you. Thank you, and a Happy New Year to everyone.
Cheryl: Thank you.
Nick: And to you, darling. How’s Moldova?
Veronica: It’s white.
Beau: White?
Nick: laughter Lucky you.
Veronica: It’s really *Beau:*tiful. It’s cold, but it’s really, really *Beau:*tiful.
Nick: Until you have to shovel your driveway.
Cheryl: Okay, Nick, how many do we have and who do we have at the moment?
Nick: Let me… I think I can tell us. Hold on.
Cheryl: Okay.
pause
Wendy: This is Wendy entering the wind tunnel.
Cheryl: laughter Hello, Wendy.
pause
Wendy: Apparently there are nine others on, but I don’t hear any.
Hong?: Okay. Hello? 0:11:53
Wendy?: Hello?
Cheryl: Hello.
Nick: I’m just doing a list. I thought it was going to announce it, but apparently when you press 9 it does a roll call of the recorded names that we all enter when we sign in, but I was hoping the whole call would hear it, but I guess it’s just the person who pressed 9.
Cheryl: Just… Okay. Alright. Can we find out who’s here?
Nick: I have. Cheryl, Veronica, Mohamed, Hawa, José, Beau:, and Wendy.
Hong: Hi, Nick. Hong is here.
Nick: Ah! And Hong.
Alan: And Alan is here.
Sébastien: Sébastien is here.
Cheryl: Who is that? Sorry.
Alan: Sébastien.
Sébastien: Sébastien.
Cheryl: Ah! Thank you for that, Nick 0:13:06.
Alan: Do they not announce us even though the voice says they’re going to?
Cheryl: No… overtalking
Beau: It creates a roll call list apparently that you can access.
Nick: Yeah. You can press 9 and hear the roll call list, and it sends me a list of names at the end but it doesn’t announce you. I think there’s a way I can get it to do that, though.
Cheryl: Okay. Well, most importantly, I count a quorum.
Alan: This has got to be the earliest one we’ve ever had.
Cheryl: Let’s thank our lucky stars. Unless somebody… Fatimata is getting a call-back I think in about another 10 minutes, is that correct?
Beau:?: Yeah.
Cheryl: Okay, alright. So let’s… So perilously close to starting on time.
Nick: On the apologies front, Carlos is on holidays and he said he might call in but very well might not.
Cheryl: Are there any other apologies we know of?
Nick: Not that I know of.
Cheryl: Okay. Alright then. The first matter is the standing agenda item, adoption of the agenda. Now if you look at the agenda, it’s a modification on one we have previously had, but I’ll definitely suggest for people’s sanity, check it, because I can’t say I’m totally confident that I have dotted all the I’s and crossed all the T’s. Oh, look, I can see a spelling error as I scroll down immediately. But particularly, any new business or any other business? Does anybody wish to make any additions or changes to the agenda?
Beau: This is Beau:. I just wanted to mention too, perhaps you can indulge me or help me to figure whether they’re agenda items or not, but from the North American call yesterday, the North American RALO group wanted to make sure that two things were discussed in this call. One is to have the ALAC consider making a statement on the NTIA review, and I can provide more details if everybody doesn’t already know about that. And then the other one is there was a request to make more… a request specifically of ICANN to make more resources available to facilitate communication with ALSes like…
Alan: Well, with RALOs.
Beau: And RALOs. I thought it was both. Is that right?
Alan: Well, primarily we want to make sure that our discussions with RALOs go ahead. I don’t think the discussion yesterday focussed on providing services to facilitate with ALSes. I may be wrong, but that wasn’t my impression.
Beau: Okay. So then in general, like a staff person for Nick who would assist in facilitating communication with other parts of At-Large.
Alan: We can elaborate. Let’s wait till we get to the item.
Beau: Sure.
Cheryl: Okay, I’ll have those two things added. Sounds to me like the second one is one of the major focuses that we have already… wanting to look at and follow up specifically as a measurable and a deliverable out of Delhi, so certainly that’s an excellent addition. And NTIA is me being in a huge 0:16:48 state forgetting to put it on, so thank you very much, _inaudible_ that is one that definitely needed to get onto there.
Any other changes or additions to the agenda? pause If not, we have now done our roll call, then I’ll call for any other apologies and any other persons who may have joined in. Nick, is there anyone else coming since we’ve started?
Nick: Not yet. I’m dealing with a technical problem on the translation side, but no, there hasn’t been any new…
Cheryl: Okay.
Alan: If the meeting has formally started, I would like either a roll call or a readout of the list of who’s present for those of us who started a bit late.
Cheryl: Certainly. At the moment… And inaudible 0:17:38 just double-check me, apparently if you hit 9 you can hear a roll call at any time. But as I understand it right now, we have myself, Mohamed, José, Veronica, Beau:, Hawa with translation, Alan, Sébastien, Hong, and Wendy. Fatimata will be inaudible 0:17:59 to in about 10 minutes. Have I missed anybody? pause No? The only apology we have at this specific stage is Carlos.
Okay. Have we all had time to look at the minutes of the previous meeting?
Male: No.
Cheryl: No. Okay, if we can look at the minutes of the meeting 11th of December, the meeting summary shows a few items which we’ve moved into action arriving 0:18:57. Do you want me to go through very briefly the main points, or do you wish to read through them at this point? pause Absolute deathly silence.
Sébastien: I guess we can go ahead then.
Cheryl: laughter Okay. Are there any alterations, changes, or comments on the minutes of the December 11th meeting? pause Okay. I’d call for the minutes of the previous meeting to be adopted. Does anyone wish to put forward that motion?
Alan: So moved. Alan.
Cheryl: And I call for inaudible 0:20:00.
Beau: Second.
Cheryl: Is there any dissent? pause The minutes of the previous meeting, of the 11th of December, are now carried.
Now we need to review the action items of the previous minutes. If you care to open the action items page, and at this point I would also suggest that a sanity 0:20:26 check is done to make sure I haven’t missed one, but the very rough action item list that I editeded – “editeded”? oh well, a new word – earlier today included the Los Angeles summary, working groups, which should be… that one 0:20:47 “New gTLDs” is on the same line, it should be the next line, WHOIS, RAA, IPv4 to v6 migration, ALAC member commitments to working groups and activities, and New Delhi meeting planning, and a standalone item of “Board Liaison issues raised.” Many of those matters are coming up under specific agenda items. Having 0:21:11 talk on any one or take conversation and comment on any one of those now, but the one that does not come up under any other agenda item tonight is the “Board Liaison issues raised” – particularly Wendy’s, is 0:21:28 relevant to some of the comments on our last minutes regarding the planning and logistical issues for the New Delhi and _inaudible_ meetings. Would you care to comment on that?
Wendy: There no longer exists a meetings committee of the board, but the board is aware of people’s concerns about meetings. Whether that means anything will change is anyone’s guess.
Cheryl: laughter You can but try. Would anybody care to raise any points on action items or discuss any of those matters now rather than in the 0:22:15 follow-up agenda items?
Alan: I’m happy to review them again at the end if we haven’t covered them during the other items.
Cheryl: Thank you, Alan. Hawa, do we have a problem with translation now, or…? Nick, do we still have technical issues with translation? Does Hawa wish to make a comment?
Alan: Do we have Nick?
Hawa?: inaudible 0:22:52.
Cheryl: Hong, yes.
Hong: Hi, hello?
Cheryl: Yes. Did you wish to say something, Hong?
Hong: Oh, yes. I want to know – 1, 2, 3, 4 – number 4, ALAC members’ commitment to working groups and activities, does this mean this is already covered on IDN working group, the ccNSO working group, so we have an umbrella… this is a summary of all the working groups?
Cheryl: No, we have that as a specific agenda item later on.
Hong: Oh, I see.
Cheryl: But it was raised in our last meeting, so… overtalking 0:23:35
Alan: Cheryl, point of clarification. Is this item referring to simply the list of who’s doing what or actually getting people to do things?
Cheryl: I would love to think that it covers both.
Alan: laughter
Cheryl: Again, I’ve made it in hope and dying despair, and that’s yet to be seen.
Okay, let’s move on from our action items then now and look at a review of current status of ALS applications. Do we have any… overtalking 0:24:05?
Sébastien: Just a point of order. I discussed with Skype with Hawa, she has no _inaudible_ translation. She is listening in English and I would like to ask you to make any effort possible to speak slowly and if she gets too much trouble, I will help her.
Cheryl: Thank you, Sébastien. Did Hawa wish to make any comment on matters so far?
Sébastien: French – 0:24:31 to 0:24:46 Okay, go ahead, Cheryl.
Cheryl: Okay. Thank you, Sébastien. And just to remind Hawa and everybody else that there is an ALAC teleconference coordination chat in Skype. If you are trying to flag that you wish to say something, you can either use that, which will be recorded, or ping me separately on Skype and… overtalking 0:25:15
Alan: What is the name of the formal one?
Cheryl: It’s… As a bookmark… It comes up on mine as “ALAC teleconference coordination” as a bookmark.
Alan: All one word?
Cheryl: No, all… That’s a sentence.
Alan: Ah.
Wendy: If anyone wants to add Wendy Seltzer to that, please do so.
Cheryl: inaudible 0:25:45, Wendy, to get you in there.
Wendy: Thank you.
Cheryl: You’ve probably been added multiple times now, but… laughter
Alan: Do we have to be added to be in it?
Cheryl: Very good question.
Sébastien: I guess so, yes.
Alan: In that case, could whoever owns it add me?
Sébastien: No, it’s… You don’t need to be an admin, but you need to be one of the participants.
Alan: Well, then can somebody add me, because I’m not…
Cheryl: overtalking 0:26:12 …Alan, you’re added.
Alan: Okay.
Sébastien: And if you can do the same for me, please. Sébastien.
Alan: Still doesn’t show up as a bookmark, though. Ah, hold on.
Sébastien: No, it will become when… If you start to use it, it will become… overtalking
Alan: Ah. So I still have to connect to it?
Sébastien: It’s… Yeah.
Alan: Okay.
Cheryl: Okay. And once anybody’s in, then you can continue to add other people. And if I see you come up on Skype as well, we can do that as well.
Okay. Right. Now review of current status of ALS applications, do we have Nick?
Alan: He seems to have been lost.
Cheryl: I think he’s probably trying desperately to get the translation system working. I’m unaware of the current status of ALS applications. Is anybody more cognisant of what’s happening than I am? We’ve had no call for any vote.
Nick: Can you hear me now?
Alan: Yes.
Cheryl: Yes, Nick.
Nick: Sorry, I was somehow muted. But yes, I’ve been on the whole time, so…
Cheryl: Good. So we were desperately trying to get some information on the review of current status of ALS applications.
Nick: Yes. Sorry, there’s multiple things going on here in the background which are technical in nature and I’m having a hard time following what you all are doing at the same time.
Cheryl: That’s alright.
Nick: I’m asked if people can ensure that they speak up. In particular, Cheryl, you’re very faint and the interpreter is unable to hear you. I’m actually having trouble hearing you myself.
Cheryl: Oh, most unlike me but I can raise my voice.
Nick: Yes, I know that you’re capable of volume. Hopefully you won’t wake up your entire household. Hawa’s connection is also not very good, which is apparently not helping very much and obviously is not Hawa’s fault.
Onto the ALS applications question, I’m sorry I’m not actually… I need to open something in order to tell you more about that topic.
Cheryl: That’s alright. We’re actually well on schedule at the moment, so we can indulge a little.
Nick: It will only take me a second. We have an application from ADIAR, the Asociación de Derecho Informático de Argentina – please forgive my appalling pronunciation of Spanish – and from an organization called ACUI from Columbia. The ADIAR application is about to be sent out. It came in in Spanish only and has now been translated, and there is a due diligence form. So that will go out for regional comments. The ACUI application has already gone out for… it’s called in 0:29:35 for regional evaluation.
And the application for CLUSIT, the Associazione Italiana per la Sicurezza Informatica – also butchering Italian today for my sins…
José?: Molto bene! Molto bene!
Nick: laughter …so my apologies to the speakers of all the languages that I butcher today – that application is ready for the ALAC to vote. The last action taken was just over the holiday period. Wolf, the chair of the EURALO, told the region that he was going to say that the region recommended approval of the application unless he heard differently on the list within a week, and there has been no dissent. So I will send all of that off, the various things. Unfortunately because the change in the bylaws requires… Now that the board has, you know, of course put out for public comment the bylaw change which allows the voting or not depending on the wish of ALAC members and/or regional… and the state of regional advice, the public consultation period had ended, there were no unfavourable comments, but the board will now have to resolve for that bylaw amendment to be made. So until that time, ALAC will have to vote, as per its old standard policy, on every application. So providing you all so direct me, I will set up the standard one-week vote after this call.
Cheryl: Certainly works for me. Does anybody else wish to comment or ask any questions about the ALS applications?
Sébastien: Just Sébastien to say that fortunately we don’t ask for a formal approval from the RALO and the European one, for example, because they 0:31:56 will not be of any answer. There is a question and no answer to be yes. Fortunately, we don’t ask for a yes, we ask for no answer.
Nick: Yeah, one wonders about that, in that region in particular, but I will make clear in the voting the nature of the way in which the regional advice was gathered so that people can perhaps take that into account and look closely at the CLUSIT application. Though I have to say, from what I have seen, this application took several rounds of questioning between me and the applicant to fill in some blanks due to the website of CLUSIT being in Italian almost exclusively. And their statute had to be translated from Italian into English, so… And Vittorio was a member of CLUSIT, and so I asked him a few questions about it also. So it does seem manifestly a bona fide application from what I was able to… from… There was nothing that we looked into that appeared odd about it.
There is also an application from SchoolNet Africa which is due for a vote. There hasn’t been any regional comment about this. Didier Kasole did say that he had talked to members of his region and that they were in agreement that SchoolNet Africa should be approved.
Cheryl: Nick, if you put those up for the vote, can either the synopsis of what you said there be linked – because it will be in the minutes for tonight’s meeting – be linked from the vote for those members of ALAC who are not with us this evening, so they have the benefit… overtalking 0:33:55?
Nick: I will indeed. I will actually make a PDF of the e-mail sent in each case by the regional secretariat relating to regional advice and attach that…
Cheryl: Thank you _inaudible_.
Nick: …so that in addition to the application, the due diligence form, and these translated statutes and the like, that you can also see the exact wording of the regional advice and the basis upon which it was derived.
Cheryl: Thank you, that would be most helpful. Are there any other comments? Any other questions?
Mohamed: Mohamed. I would like just to comment.
Cheryl: Please, go ahead.
Mohamed: I think attaching the 0:34:38… I need to see the regional files because as to my knowledge, I haven’t seen anything on or many that’s related to that application, so it would be great if Nick could forward that also. Thank you.
Cheryl: And I will assume, Nick, that we will be getting this in the next, say, 36 hours as a vote, call to vote.
Nick: Yes.
Cheryl: Yes. Alright then. Okay, if we can now move on to regional activities. I see no… Although I haven’t refreshed since I’ve… I should refresh. Has any additional…
Fatimata Seye Sylla joined
Cheryl: Welcome, Fatimata.
Fatimata: Thank you. I’ve been waiting.
Cheryl: Oh no. laughter
Fatimata: Yeah.
Cheryl: We are just up to… We’ve finished our standing agenda items and we are just onto regional activity.
I’ve just refreshed my screen and I see no additional regional activity reports, so I will call for any regional activity from the participants. NARALO, your meeting was recently. Would you care to give us a rough and brief review?
Beau: This is Beau:. I don’t really have too much to report other than the agenda items I mentioned earlier. The conference call took place yesterday. There are some general concerns, as there have been in previous calls, about the recruiting and about communication between ALSes and the RALO, as I mentioned, and there have been some meetings or some discussions that have taken place about the summit. But in terms of anything more specific than that, I was actually late to the teleconference yesterday, so if Wendy or Alan, who I think were there on time, have any other events to report, I would suggest that they do that.
Cheryl: Wendy? Alan?
Alan: It’s Alan. I didn’t take any notes, but I don’t recall anything which we were asked to bring forward. There were certainly significant 0:37:06… some discussion on venue accessibility and the decision was made this was not a battle we were going to fight right now, but we believed ICANN understands the issues. There was a lot of discussion vis-à-vis the agenda item we’re adding on how to get RALOs and enough 0:37:28 ALSes to actually participate in policy discussions and allow us to come up with timely responses to things. That was driven by the NTIA issue and it was felt that we need some sort of administrative support, maybe the question… or cattle prods may be the question, to make sure that people are reminded in a timely fashion that things are due, and that doesn’t mean telling them that things are due tomorrow but doing things well in advance.
Cheryl: Timely… overtalking
Alan: That perhaps… Perhaps it shouldn’t be necessary, but clearly it is. I would say the same is true for the ALAC itself.
Beau: There’s also some confusion about the role of the rapporteur. People on the call didn’t know who the rapporteur was and didn’t know what that job was supposed to do and didn’t know that there was a component built into it for accountability of what ALAC does.
Alan: Well, I’ll… Cheryl, before you get in, I’ll add I don’t know if that position has been filled, if a vote is pending on it.
Cheryl: Oh, well, umm…
Alan: I know we had a bunch of volunteers for positions, I don’t remember ever voting on them, I don’t know whether they were acclaimed because of silence.
Cheryl: We had a single candidate and the listing is indeed Hawa. Hawa is filling the role of rapporteur as the single candidate on the second round after our Los Angeles meeting. It went to a second round and she was the only applicant.
Alan: But my understanding is that job is supposed to be reminding people of commitments and making sure that we don’t miss targets and things like that – that was my understanding.
Cheryl: That is… Yeah 0:39:20. That is exactly what the role is, exactly. Okay. And in fact, as part of the executive, we should note that the executive, myself, the two vice-chairs, and the rapporteur meet the alternate fortnight 0:39:43 from our meetings to try and keep those things on track as well. Okay?
Alan: Umm-hum.
Cheryl: Wendy, did you have anything to add from NARALO?
Wendy: No.
Cheryl: Okay. Can Mohamed or Hawa give us some information from AFRALO? Or Fatimata?
Fatimata: Well, I would… overtalking 0:40:18
Mohamed: Hello? It’s Mohamed.
Fatimata: …Mohamed and Hawa to say something because last time _inaudible_ I raised some issues and I still didn’t see or hear anything from them since then.
Mohamed: Hi, it’s Mohamed. Actually, due to the holidays, there’s… actually it’s nothing to report, and not much is 0:40:41 happening, but… And in the few _inaudible_ meeting, so _inaudible_ the organization, so domain name _inaudible_ AfriNIC, and basically we’re planning to have some sort of awareness and maybe try to recruit small ALSes. They are using those meetings on our agendas to those meetings. Thank you.
Cheryl: Okay. Thank you, Mohamed. José, are you able to give us some information from LACRALO?
José: Well, December is rather a dead month in Latin America and there was no kind of activity going on here.
Cheryl: Thank you. Sébastien, I have a feeling we know what you are going to say from EURALO’s point of view, but…
Sébastien: No, no, maybe you know but the others don’t know. No, no, no, I’m… We tried to set up a first EURALO board conf call for the next week. Even if it’s very difficult to get feedback from people, we have the answer of 0:42:00… we tried to find the best date and we have the answer of two ALAC members, two board members and two ALS members, and it’s big change _inaudible_ nobody. And I am expecting that some others will make the answer before the next two days and that we will be able to finalize a date and to organize a first conference call on the board of EURALO.
Cheryl: Sébastien, thank you very much for that information, and could you pass on to EURALO our intense interest and support for their first meeting and for a great deal of outcome and deliverables shortly after that first meeting?
Sébastien: I will.
Cheryl: Thank you very much.
Sébastien: And thank you for your support.
Cheryl: No problem. Anything we can do to help.
That brings me to APRALO, and I think there’s… No, there’s only me and Hong. Izumi is not on the call, is he? pause Has anyone else joined? Apparently not. Our… Like other RALOs, our…
Nick: Cheryl?
Cheryl: Okay 0:43:33, go ahead.
Nick: Sorry. I just wanted to note that, since you were asking if people had joined, Annette has been called three times and the service got voicemail. Jacqueline has been called on her two numbers and one line didn’t answer, the other had voicemail, and Ron Sherwood couldn’t be reached, voicemail was left.
Cheryl: Okay. So all attempts have been made, and it is a difficult time of year as we know.
Nick: Yeah.
Cheryl: Speaking of difficult times of year, our normal monthly APRALO meeting ended up being scheduled for the Christian Christmas Day. Not unreasonably, it was decided that we needed to find an alternate to the 25th of December, and our next meeting is in fact scheduled for January 10th. So we are out of sync. Normally we meet prior to the ALAC meeting. For January, we are meeting immediately after the ALAC meeting and we will ensure 0:44:44 that a link to the report from our minutes of that meeting is put underneath the regional activities report for this meeting, so there’s some continuity, and I would encourage any other RALO that wishes to link a synopsis report of what they’ve said here to do the same.
That brings us to liaison and other reports, and just before we go to the one listed report, which is the report from Hong, and I would like to ask you to have a look at her report on IDN liaison link… Sorry, I was just getting pinged by somebody at the same time, so my multitasking was being stretched. In future meetings, in liaison and other reports, I would like to expand the opportunity for even a very brief “We have not met because we are not doing anything at the moment” comment to be made by the liaisons and coordinators of any of the working groups. I think if we move that into a report format, now we have the formal working group structure, it might be easier for us to track and to look at what activities are or are not happening in the ALS-to-RALO, RALO-to-ALAC, and in the reverse, communication modality. Is there any comment or question or suggestion on that matter?
Thu Hue: May I have a comment from Vietnam 0:46:43?
Cheryl: Please. Please. I did not realize you had joined us. Welcome. Thank you, Thu Hue.
Thu Hue: Yeah, okay. Regarding the working group, I agree with Cheryl that we need to have a format, at least a report so that even know what is being done, the working groups need to have updates on that. I don’t see that now. First of all, the working group that I am with, the new GN- 0:47:11 _inaudible_ is not very active. I write and then I comment on wiki and things but I don’t have enough feedback on my comments. So I write the idea that you just suggested – we need to work on the format of the working group structure and report.
Cheryl: I agree too. I think having a slot in our agenda item that the working group liaisons and coordinators are aware of, give them a monthly time where they can focus and get some feedback in a more organized way. Does anybody else wish to make any comment, criticism, or alternate suggestion?
Wendy: Yes. I would suggest that the multitude of wikis is making it very difficult to know where activity is taking place. Had any new gTLD material been discussed on the mailing list, I would likely have seen it. On a wiki, which doesn’t show up in the daily report of changes to wiki pages, I had not seen it. And I’ve been trying to link all of these multifarious wikis from the front page, but they don’t all show up in the unified list of changes and I find it to be a tremendously unhelpful way of keeping track of what’s happening.
Cheryl: Well, Wendy, as you know this is a new way we are just trying. I don’t understand why changes aren’t showing up, and Nick, I would like to know if we can follow up on that because if wikis are being changed, then the change reports should be coming through to people because they’ve got RSS feeds and all sorts of possibilities, have they not?
Nick: I would say… There are a few things. Firstly, if you are signed up to a wiki, you would receive any changes in the mail. Secondly, if you choose the link on any wiki page of “dashboard,” you will see a list of the changes associated with the wikis of which you are a member.
Wendy: So I’m not seeing most of the wikis in my dashboard.
Cheryl: Okay.
Sébastien: It’s because you are not allowed to, I hope. laughter
Wendy: laughter Clearly there’s a terrible conspiracy.
Sébastien: Yes! So it is inaudible 0:49:54.
Cheryl: I sincerely hope that is not the case.
Nick: I certainly do not know of one. It may be, Wendy, that you are not a member of every working group and therefore haven’t been added as a subscriber to every wiki. In fact, I’m virtually certain that that would be the answer I 0:50:19 _inaudible_.
Annette Muehlberg joined
Alan: It’s Alan. Can I make a comment?
Cheryl: Go ahead, Alan.
Alan: If I wanted to be a member of all these working groups, I would, but I don’t have enough time in my life to participate in all these working groups. I don’t want to be notified when something on a wiki in a working group has changed or someone has made a comment. For all the working groups and activities that I’m not an active participant in, I still want to receive a regular report. Now I realize I’m as negligent as everyone else in not getting these reports in on a regular basis, but saying something has changed in a wiki and even telling me about it is noise from my perspective. I follow the things closely that I am truly involved in and think I want to participate in, but I can’t do that for everything.
Cheryl: Yeah, I hear what you’re saying, Alan, and I must say my personal perspective is an echo of that. However, I think the point Wendy raised about having the lists know we may… then coming back to what Thu Hue was saying, we may need to make it clearer to our liaison or lead, our ALAC lead, that part of what their job can be to ensure that the communication between the At-Large list and any working group activity is followed through on.
Alan: Yes.
Cheryl: Okay.
Annette: Hello, this is Annette here.
Alan: Congratulations.
Cheryl: Hello.
Annette: I just joined. It worked.
Cheryl: Welcome. We are just up to the report of the IDN liaison, and I will now call on Hong. Please ensure that you’ve all followed the link to the current changes of her ongoing report. Go ahead, Hong.
Hong: Hi, hello. I’ve one reminder and one suggestion. For the reminder, I want to remind that the ccNSO IDN committee working group – that’s a very weird name – is asking for public comments. The deadline for submission is January 16th, so it is very urgent now. We have a new IDN working group and I hope Fatimata and other colleagues could take the lead to draft a new comment, a new document and submit it to the working group. There are a couple of discussions on the fast track approach for IDN ccTLD implementation. This is very interesting and an important topic for end users, so I thought we should comment on this. This is one reminder.
My suggestion, that is similar to Wendy’s, I hope we could put more links to link up all the scattering 0:53:32 wiki pages together for the regional activity, shall we say to several sections – APRALO and European RALO, Latin American RALO, African RALO – several links so we link the regional wiki page to this main page. For instance, recently APRALO drafted a comment on the NomCom review 0:53:56, and here we can’t see that draft so we can’t comment. So I just hope that communication could be more streamlined, linked together so we can follow all the updates easily. So that’s all.
Cheryl: Hong, that is an excellent suggestion, and one which I would like us to remember to revisit when we look at the general communication question which was raised as a new agenda item from the NARALO meeting, and I know many of our… certainly our APRALO meetings have gone over this on a number of occasions as well. Thank you for that.
Hong, might I ask, with the topic list, the two sets of questions that the IDN ccTLD group is looking at, can we ask you to do a synopsis of those questions to make it easier for the working group to address the particular topics heading by heading so that the ALAC can put into the process something similar to… overtalking 0:55:21 …just a minute – something similar to… overtalking?
Hong: Well, Cheryl, I can’t hear anything.
Alan: There’s a huge amount of noise going on from somewhere.
Hong: _inaudible_
Cheryl: Say again? Somebody needs to mute. Nick, can you inaudible 0:55:46 who it is needs to mute?
Nick: 6 will mute and 7 unmute any line, as a point of interest.
Cheryl: It seems like we’ve lost that background noise now anyway. My suggestion, Hong, was that we provide the topic list from the discussions so that the working group can use those as a template.
Hong: Sure, of course. I can draft a background, an introduction and send it to the working group list.
Cheryl: I think that would be most helpful.
Hong: Right, right. And Cheryl, you may wish to announce that the chair of this new group, the new chair so and she 0:56:41 can take the lead. laughter
Cheryl: Sorry, the chair of the ccNSO working group?
Hong: No, no, no. The chair of our working group on IDN. Right? It should be a member of ALAC. Do you remember our discussion?
Cheryl: Yes, I do remember this discussion. In fact, your role as liaison has not changed, rather that we have at Los Angeles implemented the fact that there will be an ALAC member who is responsible to coordinate between ALAC and each working group, and to that end there is two names as far as I know – Fatimata and Mohamed.
Male: inaudible 0:57:38
Cheryl: Has the working group decided which of you or are you co-leading? pause Hello?
Fatimata: Well, I didn’t hear anything about…
Carlos Aguirre joined?
Male: Hello?
Alan: This is descending into unusability.
Cheryl: It’s not particularly good, is it?
Beau: And it was going so well, too. laughter
Cheryl: Oh well, never mind. It has got worse, let’s face it. Let’s just power on then.
Hong, as soon as that working group concerns 0:58:32 which of them is going to be the ALAC lead, it will be announced on the internal and the external lists and put on the wiki. At this stage, I have not got a confirmation of whom is leading.
Alan: May…
Cheryl: Are you going to tell me now?
Alan: Cheryl, may I suggest that either the two people who have volunteered decide among themselves who will do it, or we have a vote, but we can’t go on forever with not having someone.
Cheryl: No. I couldn’t agree more. So that needs to be decided in the next 48 hours. Okay?
Hong?: Okay.
Cheryl: Thank you.
Alan: I… Hong, are you finished on your report?
Cheryl: Hong?
Hong: Oh, yeah. I did.
Alan: Okay. I do have one comment. The issue of the fast track for IDN ccTLDs and exactly what does this mean – is this one TLD equivalent to the two-character ASCII or does it mean the 45 or 35 IDs in different languages that India is requesting and says is mandatory? I think it’s going to be close to a blow-up. I think it’s going to be very, very difficult to come to closure between the GNSO and the GAC and the ccNSO, and I don’t know if we need to comment on it, but I think we need to monitor this closely. I think this is going to be a significant problem issue.
Hong: Thanks, Alan, and I fully agree with you. The problem now is that if the fast track is going to be oversimplifying procedure 1:00:15, it is going to cause many controversies and inconsistencies, but if we a complicated procedure, it won’t be fast. So now the problem that’s more than what you mentioned, even though it’s very important, it’s more than 1:00:36 the country name in IDNs but also what is the nature for the fast track? Is this going to be the first step for the true implementation or it’s just an experiment? This is very important, otherwise those parties who are going to acquire this fast track could consolidate their position in the real… I mean, the long-term implementation. How to coordinate the fast track with the long-term implementation, all these issues have not been thought 1:01:08 out, so we should absolutely comment on this.
Cheryl: overtalking
Alan: Well, I’m not sure we have a lot to add, but I think we need to watch it because we may get to a stage where our users are disadvantaged because of what’s coming up.
Cheryl: And that’s a very important point to make, and I must say the current discussion on that topic today did include Edmon Chung’s mentioning that the fast track approach should be treated as somewhat experimental in nature. It is not something that should be seen as setting new precedent. But there is, as Hong said, a great deal of discussion, and some of it will be quite contentious, I’m sure.
Alan: As it stands right now, there are a good number of people who are supporting a very extensive implementation of IDN ccTLDs – that is far more than one per country and virtually no controls over how people pick what they say is their new ccTLD – which essentially will bypass much of the criteria set up for IDN ccTL-… or gTLDs, and if that happens, we may be in a very significant problem. We’ve 1:02:37…
Cheryl: overtalking
Wendy: On the other hand, it might actually get us new gTLDs.
Alan: It might. All I’m saying is we have two parts of the organization, or three parts of the organization which may be very much at loggerheads…
Wendy?: I agree.
Alan: …and I think we need to be aware of that. I’m not issuing comment on which is the best way.
Cheryl: I think this is where it is most important that we get some form of comment from each of the regions on this matter. Even if the comment is “We don’t care,” we need to know that. I doubt that that will be the comment, but it is important for us to collate and 1:03:14 collect that information.
Okay. Thank you very much, Hong. Are there any other liaison reports that wish to be given? And then Nick has a couple of points he’s been pinging me on that he’d like to bring in.
José: Well, this is José reporting on the WHOIS group. I tried to arrange a conference call on the last days of December with the working group, but there was no response from any of the members so we couldn’t do it, and I’ll try to arrange a new conference for this month so I can report for next time.
Cheryl: Thank you, José. You can but 1:04:01 _inaudible_. Any other liaison reports?
Alan: It’s Alan. I’ve been negligent, I’m afraid. You should have the report before the end of today on the GNSO. The GNSO has been very active and the time commitment on that in part is one of the reasons I haven’t done the report, but I will get one out.
Cheryl: Thanks. And if it’s extensive, obviously having it linked is going to be very useful, but are there any highlights you wish to raise verbally now?
Alan: I don’t think there’s anything that requires our action at this point. There have been a number of issues raised saying, “Do we want to comment on…?” and those have gone through, so you’ve been alerted of those. Just a report of what’s going on, though, I think has some interest, and I will get it out.
Cheryl: Most definitely. Any others? Or 1:04:48 I will call on Wendy.
Wendy: Yeah, by contrast, there has been very little discussion on the board _inaudible. That suggests that if there are issues that are of concern to the At-Large or to segments of the At-Large, by all means we should raise them rather than waiting for someone or some other entity to ask _inaudible 1:05:16 what we _inaudible_.
Cheryl: Okay, thank you. Someone needs to mute again. Can everyone check? If they’re in a noisy environment, that they need to hit 6 and then 7 to unmute.
Nick, you had a couple of points you pinged me on while Hong was making her report.
Alan: Before Nick starts, anyone who has children in the background, please mute. Let’s be more specific.
Cheryl: laughter And you think I’m not subtle.
Alan: Well… laughter I can’t hear half of what’s going on.
Wendy?: Or anyone who is a child.
Cheryl: Okay.
Wendy?: Or is impersonating one _inaudible_.
Cheryl: Please check your environment. Someone with small children is giving us a lot of background noise. If you can all press 6, unless you are in a silent room, it will make it inaudible 1:06:19 easier for us all.
Carlos: Carlos here. Sorry.
Annette?: _inaudible_ because of the children.
Fatimata?: _inaudible_
Cheryl: That’s probably busy with the children, yeah.
Carlos: Sorry. My environment is inaudible 1:06:38 because excellent music but not children noise.
Annette?: Excellent music.
Cheryl: Okay, 6 will work regardless of what the background noise is – 6 to mute, 7 to unmute.
Cheryl: Okay, Nick, if you wish.
Alan: Is Nick there?
Cheryl: Hello, Nick?
Nick: Yes, sorry. I was unmuting myself.
Cheryl: laughter
Nick: I’m experimenting online muting people to try and find who the person is who is making the noise and having zero success at that. My apologies.
Alan: Oh, you can mute other people?
Nick: I have a console where I can mute other people.
Alan: Wow.
Cheryl: Go for it, Nick!
Alan: Why don’t you mute them all and then start adding one by one?
Nick: I think I may have found it, actually.
Cheryl: Ah, well done. Okay, Nick, you wish to raise a couple of points?
Nick: Yes. All I wanted to say was I haven’t done a written staff report because of December and since we met on the 11th of December and, you know, then we all… The offices were closed from the 22nd to the 11th and people got millions of invitations to wikis and the like, so I think most of you were aware of what administrivia I was engaged in. I can tell you that we think we have identified the person to fill the coordination officer role, the more junior open position, which will greatly help on things like Hong’s example of posting, cross-posting of information that’s likely to be of interest to multiple constituencies and alerting people and that sort of thing. And once of course we’ve gone through the requisite background checking and all that sort of thing, I’ll needless to say give you a bit more information on this person. And we are down to a pretty short list for the RALO support officer person, and so soon I should be able to give you some more news and details on that position, which, needless to say, the addition of those two people will take up some time in training but should provide a great deal of extra capacity in helping to deal with, amongst other things, the communication improvements that have been requested.
Cheryl: That is good news indeed, I must say. Any other reports, questions, or comments? pause Nick, you need to find a little more 6 background deletion. Somebody’s still got a noisy background on. Perhaps you should just mute us all excepting me, because my place is quiet. It’s very late at night here. Nobody’s making any noise, excepting me.
Alan: How about if everyone gets muted and they know… we say “You have to unmute yourself, 7, to speak,” and then we’ll see who it is?
Cheryl: Yeah, that would be fine. Okay.
We now need to move on to policy matters, and at the moment the two items for public comment showing on the ICANN page is the domain tasting initial report, which has an end date of 28 of January, and the introduction of IDN ccTLD, the fast track option, which Hong has referred to earlier, and her mention is of an end of 16th of January for report, but I note that the public comment page on the ICANN site currently has that at ending 25th of January as well – perhaps we should clarify that.
We go back to the policy matters which were carried over from the previous meeting. Most of those have in fact been discussed in our liaison or working group reports, with the exception of RAA. But it is those line items that I have proposed, and I believe we have support, to go in under specific working group reports for future agendas. We need to however add, and we may as well add it here, the point raised by NARALO on the NTIA review. And if Beau: or Alan would like to give us a little background briefing and information on adding that into our policy review work, and then I’ll ask for any comments by Alan on the domain tasting final and what actions, if any, we wish to take on that. Beau: and Alan, you’ll need to unmute.
Alan: I don’t know if you heard me. I may have been muted. Beau:, do you want to talk, or should I? Beau:, if you’re saying something, you’re muted.
Cheryl: laughter Good idea of yours, Alan.
Beau: What is the unmute?
Alan: I just heard that, so… Unmute for everyone is 7.
Beau: Unmute is 7.
Alan: Okay. We heard you though.
Beau: I’m not sure what the issue is. Can you hear me now?
Alan: Yes, we can hear you.
Beau: Okay, great. Okay, the NTIA thing, February 15th is the deadline to submit comments to the US Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration – that’s what NTIA stands for. They’re in the process of doing a review basically of how ICANN is fulfilling its job or doing its job, and within the context of yesterday’s NARALO call, there was very strong sentiment that we should have some kind of response or some kind of submission to the NTIA. And I think it actually would be fairly easy to do, because if you look at the NTIA’s notice in the Federal Register, all of the background information is there and then there are basically 10 points on the request for comment that basically ask you questions – you know, “Has ICANN done a good job on this? Has ICANN done a good job on that?” – and I think it would be relatively easy for ALAC to make a submission. Siavash sent a note around a week or so ago that seemed to indicate that ALAC has done this before. So the sentiment was that we should do it and possibly, if we couldn’t get around to it before New Delhi, that we maybe even schedule some time at the early part of the New Delhi gathering to draft a comment and send it to the NTIA. But within all of these different comment points, there are many, many questions that pertain to issues that should be really of interest to users, including, you know, is ICANN doing a proper job of being transparent? So, you know, given that ALAC is supposed to represent the user community, this is something that you should do, I think.
Cheryl: I think that’s very important. Would anybody else… Sorry, Beau:, can you just tell me, when is the closing date? It ends when?
Beau: February 15th.
Alan: The last day of ICANN.
Beau: Yeah.
Cheryl: Thank you. I’m just making the edit now. Any comments or questions from anyone?
Alan: I have some follow-on comments. We have asked… The NARALO has asked a small group of people led by Wendy to put… to draft something. I think if something’s going to come out from the ALAC, it has to have active support from the other RALOs, however. So assuming that can come during some discussion, assuming we allocate some significant time to it in Delhi, we can do that. But the RALOs have to do something on their own also. It may be difficult to come to closure on this one because there are some regions of 1:16:05 the world that feel very strongly that the Department of Commerce should simply give up and let ICANN work on its own, others feel that ICANN should really be a UN body or things like that. I mean, some countries have very strong positions on this.
Cheryl: Indeed.
Alan: How the ALAC can come to closure on it quickly is perhaps a little bit unclear, but I think we need to discuss it to the extent that we either decide to issue a statement or not and that this be a conscious decision as opposed to “The time ran out.”
Cheryl: Yeah. It sounds like we have a time cost however, which means we can utilize the NARALO draft in the At-Large list and then work towards having a synthesis of RALO input in New Delhi for a specific section of time with a deliverable outcome by the deadline. How much time do you think we will need to schedule in New Delhi to dedicate to this, as you say, rather complex issue?
Alan: I would say at least a half-hour discussion at the beginning of the week, and then something towards the close of the week. And I would say no less than a half an hour and that probably won’t be sufficient, assuming we’ve made the decision that we want to do something.
Cheryl: Well, I’ll put that to the meeting. I would think from APRALO’s point of view, yes, we would be wanting to do something, but do we have anybody who says we don’t want to put any comment on the NTIA review?
Sébastien: It’s Sébastien. I would like to say that I think it’s very important that we as the ALAC, not just RALO, have a statement and I think really if we want to show that ICANN is doing well, as we are a part of ICANN and it’s one of the major achievement of ICANN to have the At-Large Structure working, if we are unable to have a common statement, it will show that it’s not working so well. And if we say on one hand that yes, everything is okay, and on the other hand we show that we are unable to find a common statement at the ALAC level or at the At-Large level, it will be a pity 1:18:48. And I really think that it’s important to have as much as common where possible. Maybe we can start saying that during one week or two weeks it’s RALO level, but then we need to have at our level some work to try to find a common position on that subject.
Cheryl: Indeed. Any other comments?
Beau: This is Beau: again, just briefly. I mean, even if we can’t come to consensus, I would still say that going through the 10 points in the request for comment in this document would be a good policy exercise for ALAC anyway because the questions are both general enough but yet specific enough that they represent a lot of policy things that we should have formed opinions on anyway.
Cheryl: Excellent concept and very good observation. Thank you, Beau:. Is there anyone who doesn’t think we should do this as an important piece of policy work and as a major focus in our New Delhi meeting? pause In which case I will now save what I’ve just edited on our monthly teleconference, so it now is item 6 under policy matters and reads “NTIA Review ends February 15th. We will work from an NARALO draft online then get RALO input and look towards development for a common statement in New Delhi.”
Okay. If we might also note the public comment requirement on domain tasting initial report which ends 28th of January, and I’d like to get the meeting’s opinion after any background Alan wishes to give us on whether we should put a comment in on this important matter. Alan?
Alan: Well, for those who haven’t had a chance to look, it just came out yesterday afternoon, and the link I first distributed changed along the way but there are now e-mails that have two different links that were at last look working to look at the report. What this report is, is really a consolidation by staff of the constituency reports. So the latter half of the report is actually verbatim including the constituency reports. The first half really breaks down the constituency reports and summarizes them by various subjects. So it’s not a staff position as such, but simply some staff analysis of the constituency reports.
Since our constituencies, our pseudo-constituency is one of the ones that is included, I’m not sure we need to make a comment on this. I mean, this is the opportunity for the rest of the world to comment on what the internal ICANN bodies have said. Certainly there’s no reason we cannot comment on it and there’s no reason that individuals or RALOs cannot comment on it, but I don’t think that we are obliged to comment on it – it’s an opportunity for other people to comment essentially on our work. But we could certainly react to things within the other constituency reports or within ours for that matter, but I don’t think anything is obligatory at this point unless we have something particular to say.
Cheryl: Thank you, Alan. Does anyone else wish to make a comment, question, or alternate suggestion? You’ll need to 7 to speak. Or you could ping me on Skype if you’re having difficulty finding 7. Or 1:23:01… overtalking
Alan: Or if you’ve fallen asleep.
Cheryl: If you’ve fallen asleep. I will then take your suggestion, Alan, that whilst it is not mandatory, we should ask the ALAC, “Do we wish to react and make any comment or not?” and perhaps secondly, “Is this an opportunity for the representatives in each RALO to remind the ALSes that this is another opportunity that they may have for input?”
Alan: Cheryl, I’ll add something to my comment. I don’t think it is mandatory or perhaps even expected that ALAC make a comment. I think it is mandatory that all ALAC members actually read the report. It’s not that long. It’s only 20-something pages and I think it’s double-spaced, and I think it’s mandatory that the RALOs point out to the ALSes that this report has been issued.
Cheryl: I think that certainly is a sensible way forward, and yes, it didn’t take me more than one cup of coffee worth of my time to read it earlier today. I agree, Alan, it’s mandatory reading but I don’t think we can set up a quiz, unfortunately.
Alan: laughter
Cheryl: I’d like to do a pop quiz, but that’s not the situation. So we will perhaps take this online as to the At-Large and a gentle prod to the RALO secretariats on the internal list as well to request that they make an effort to ensure that the ALSes are all aware of this public comment period, and offer any facilitation and assistance that we can give to help their comments be clearly heard. Would anybody else like to make a counterpoint, an objection, or an alternate suggestion?
Wendy: Simply a count. I count 57 pages.
Cheryl: 57… overtalking 1:25:19
Alan: Half of those are the actual constituency reports, though.
Cheryl: Yeah.
Alan: A little over half.
Wendy: Many of which are more interesting than what staff says in summary.
Cheryl: Yeah, the appendix is almost… overtalking
Alan: If you trust the staff, it’s only the first 25 pages.
Cheryl: laughter
Alan: In any case, you could read the first half or the second half depending on your inclination.
Cheryl: Or all of it.
Alan: Or all of it.
Cheryl: Okay. Alright then. Are there any other matters on policy that anyone wishes to raise? pause
In which case, we’ll move on to other matters from previous meetings, which in many cases covers off what we’ve been talking about in terms of work planning and identification of issues. We do need someone to take the lead on watching the ICANN website and having a mechanism for calls for any working group, ad hoc or otherwise, activity. And the work plan and tracking, which we’ve discussed previously, certainly in Los Angeles, also fits in here. This is not something I believe we are going to suddenly create tonight, but I would like to see it as an agenda item for finalization and agreement in New Delhi. Is that something that people are comfortable with or do they have an alternate suggestion? And you’ll need to 7 to unmute yourselves. pause Well, dare I say, dissent or silence? laughter What do I have here? Does silence mean agreement or does silence mean you haven’t found… overtalking 1:27:18?
Wendy?: Multitasking.
Cheryl: Does Hawa wish to say anything? I’m aware that translation may be a problem.
Sébastien: French – 1:27:31
Translator: You are asked if you would like to add a comment.
Cheryl: Okay.
Alan: Was that the translator translating Sébastien’s question into English?
Cheryl: I think so.
Alan: laughter Maybe that’s our problem.
Cheryl: Okay. At the other matters… I think this is an important thing. We need to build on our agreements on how working group activity and policy is 1:28:18 _inaudible_ will be undertaken that we did in LA. I would certainly like to see it in our New Delhi agenda. And… overtalking
Alan: I’m confused, Cheryl. Are you asking us to refine the practice that we decided on, or what? I’m not quite sure.
Cheryl: Okay. Not so much a refinement, to actually get a commitment to make it happen. We have a… First of all, we need somebody to take responsibility for making sure that we watch the ICANN website and that we get early and timely responses based on what NARALO was discussing yesterday. While we have the RALO secretariats and ourselves together, I think that would be an ideal time, in New Delhi, to make commitment and undertaking, if not refinement.
Alan: Okay. You’re talking about working interactions between the ALAC and its RALOs?
Cheryl: Indeed.
Alan: Okay.
Cheryl: Which really fits into communications and just about everything else we’ve got on our agenda from previous meetings. I don’t think it is something that the 9 or 10 of us in a teleconference are going to come to great and agreed 1:29:48 outcomes in. I think it is a face-to-face matter.
Alan: Okay. Just as a point of information, are these teleconferences supposed to include the RALO secretariats or not?
Cheryl: There’s no compulsion, but there’s no barrier.
Alan: Okay. Do they know that?
Wendy: Doubtful.
Cheryl: We would have to ask them. We… overtalking 1:30:19
Sébastien: Yeah, I think part of them know, but we have a trouble with words. Is it secretariat? Is it the chairman or the chairperson of the RALO? Is it both? Is it one and in each region it’s not the same, then somebody from the RALO may participate? What is the right term to say 1:30:49?
Alan: Then we need to decide exactly what we mean so everyone understands the same thing.
Cheryl: Indeed… overtalking
Nick: The members of the ALAC internal list include the chair and vice-chair of any region which has those offices as well as the secretariat for any region that has those offices, and they are notified of upcoming meetings and they know that they are welcome to listen in. There have been some mailing list postings on that subject I think from other members of the committee saying that “You’re always welcome.” In fact, it was also stated in the first November meeting in Los Angeles, that the secretariats were all welcome, and they were all present so I think it is well known. I actually received apologies from two members or 1:31:38 the secretariats for this conference even though they know they don’t have to show up.
Cheryl: Ah… Sorry. _inaudible_ Perhaps, Nick, if we listed those apologies, people may then note that they really are welcome, it’s not just lip service. coughs
Nick: Certainly can do.
Cheryl: “Sorry,” she said choking to death here. Okay.
Okay, we still I believe need to take the opportunity while we are face-to-face to agree and to refine our commitment and also to define these regional inputs and exactly how we want to improve this communication. So I think we will set aside say 35 to 45 minutes in New Delhi for that. We can probably also look at that as some part of our OneDay workshop as well, but we’ll leave that to the summit planning and the authority and 1:32:52 New Delhi meeting planning section.
The next two parts of matters from previous meeting…
Wendy: I’m sorry. Did I miss my chance to add something to the New Delhi meeting?
Cheryl: Not yet.
Alan: No, I don’t think we’ve gotten to it yet.
Cheryl: We’re trying to get there, Wendy. I’m plowing towards it as fast as I can.
Wendy: Sorry.
Cheryl: I would draw your attention to the two links “Commitments of ALAC Members” and the “At-Large Officers and Working Group Leaders.” The first of that list, you really, if you are an ALAC member, you really should have commitments in both columns, in both the administration commitments and the policy commitment. Please review that and ensure that you have offered yourself for both policy activities and administration. And with the second one, we need to ensure that the people who are the liaisons lead 1:33:04 and coordinators know that from now on a small formal report will be required at an ALAC meeting. And I’d call for any questions, comments, or discussion on either of those lists and matters 1:34:23.
Alan: I assume you mean prior to or at the meetings.
Cheryl: Prior to or at. Thank you, yeah. We would prefer prior to. pause
In which case, that brings us to new business and any other business. Might I ask if our discussions so far have gone some way towards what the new item on the ALAC, RALO, and ALS communications points that North America wished to bring up?
Alan: It’s Alan. I think Nick’s statement that there will be people hired with some of these direct responsibilities combined with the other comments we have made I think to some extent takes it off the table at this point.
Cheryl: Okay. So I won’t now edit 1:35:26… overtalking
Alan: I don’t know if Beau agrees. I do have one other thing before I release the table. Beau: and I, we’re both negligent. We both forgot something which was raised at the meeting yesterday and it was deemed to be very important – that is the de facto policy that ALAC can adopt things by the lack of anyone objecting. That is, silence implies acceptance of things. And there was a strong feeling against that policy and that ALAC needs to be active and do things positively as opposed to by inaction. I don’t know how we solve this, but I do… I think we need to register the fact that there was a very strong feeling about that.
Cheryl: From NARALO. Yeah.
Alan: From NARALO.
Cheryl: And I think it’s important that…
Alan: Supported by the two ALAC members who were at the meeting.
Cheryl: Understood, understood. But it is going to be one of those points where regional difference and regional variation is quite significant and I would suggest that that point is again one that would be well addressed in a face-to-face context, either in our OneDay workshop when we have the RALOs as well as ALAC or in, if we need to, in a formal follow-up in a meeting in New Delhi.
Alan: You keep talking about a OneDay workshop. Is this an announcement that there will be a Sunday OneDay workshop?
Cheryl: As far as I’m aware. Nobody has suggested we shouldn’t do a Sunday 1:37:11… overtalking
Alan: Not having seen an agenda yet, I didn’t… I wasn’t aware that that was happening.
Cheryl: Well, what an awfully perfect time for us to move into the new business and any other business. laughter The first point however is not the New Delhi planning but summit planning and the working group activities that need to be involved – in other words, policy activities that might need to be involved in buy-in for the summit. Sébastien, I would call on you to make this report. We have had a couple of summit meetings, if you’d like to inform ALAC what has happened so far.
Sébastien: Thanks, Cheryl. We tried work 1:38:05 on the _inaudible_ of the motion about this and meet that we agree on in, I don’t remember, the November meeting I guess, and we are now working on the question of scheduling the meeting and organizing the meeting knowing that in parallel there is some work to be done with the ICANN staff to discuss budget issues, and we are working both the budget issue and the content issue and organization of the summit itself. We have the first draft of both documents, of a budget and a first draft for a schedule for summit, and we are still working on both documents, and we will be very happy to have your inputs and your feedback on that. We really think that it’s important that all ALAC members and all RALOs and ALSes are aware of that and help us to build it to be sure that we get what each one of us would like to have in this meeting. At the end, we will have to make decisions but today it’s still open and the question on, for example, how many days, how many meetings, what are the subjects we’ll all work on? I don’t know if you have the access to the… There is a summit working group wiki and at least I think you must try to have access to that and to see what is happening to… to see the document issue. Or if you prefer, I can send some of them to the list, it’s really… the ALAC internal list, but it’s much more easier I guess on the wiki.
Nick: Just so you know, the wiki is public and it is linked on the policy working group pages of the ALAC wiki and also off of the website at alac.icann.org.
Cheryl: Thank you.
Sébastien. Okay. And I add today the current draft schedule. The last schedule we are discussing on… 1:41:01 we are not yet agreed on that, it’s not an agreement, a document agreed, but I didn’t find how to create a new page and I just attached a new document. I need to make some training about wiki, but I will do.
Cheryl: Well, thank you for that, Sébastien. One other point I would perhaps raise as well, and this is unfortunate that tonight neither Robert or Vanda, who have attended the summit meetings along with Hawa and myself, representing the ALAC here tonight, but Vanda made a very important observation at our first meeting, and it is one that we are looking to her to follow up, and that is the possibility of some leverage in terms of the financial burden of the summit being made with the lack of emerging and developing and economies that the fellowship system normally would be taking advantage of. There’s not a lot of emerging economies and developing economies requiring fellowship assistance in the Europe region and she wants planning on exploring whether or not some leverage for a summit outcome could be made from that to minimize the extraordinary budget requirements that the summit may have.
Hawa, is there anything else that you would like to raise regarding this inaudible 1:42:53 the meeting? pause Sébastien, can you double-check with Hawa, please?
Sébastien: French – 1:43:10
Izumi Aizu joined
Hawa: French – 1:43:21
Translator: I think that Cheryl made the point and we agreed with what she said.
Cheryl: Okay. Thank you, Hawa. A final point on the summit planning – it would be… the summit working group believe it would be advantageous in New Delhi while the RALO and ALAC are together for an amount of time to discuss as a group of the whole aspects of the summit planning and of the commitment and undertaking by the RALOs and the ALSes to support or otherwise the summit activity. So with your permission I would like to suggest that we also make time to put the summit as part of our agenda as well.
I am aware that we are now 8 minutes over our allocated time and would like to make the following suggestion – that we move the New Delhi meeting planning to the next agenda item, and if you refresh your meeting notes, I’ve made that change while we’ve been talking, and we deal with that now in the next 10 minutes if you agree to a 10-minute extension, and that the items “Research Opportunities” and other discussions including any in-service changing, review of new webpage services, and use of collaborative tools be put on as a carry-over item to the next meeting. Do I have first of all support for a 10-minute extension to deal with New Delhi meeting planning?
Alan: I support it. Alan.
Sébastien: I second. Sébastien.
Cheryl: overtalking 1:45:41
Izumi: Second. This is Izumi. Sorry for my very late joining.
Cheryl: Ah, welcome Izumi. Good to have you. You’re getting here just at the very important part of planning for New Delhi, so welcome indeed.
Okay, so we’ll take our 10-minute extension and it would be my intention to close the meeting at that point in time, and that we devote time to the other of the 1:46:07 business, research opportunities and review of webpage services and tools, to our next meeting, or we can take it online.
Alan?: Agreed.
Cheryl: Okay. Now I am unaware that the working group… the subcommittee – sorry – for the New Delhi meeting has had time to do anything between now and our last meeting, but I think Veronica, you are the only one here. As part of that, if you would care to make some comment?
Veronica: Umm…
Alan: Cheryl, you had sub-number one, Roman numeral I on travel arrangements first. Do we plan to talk about that?
Cheryl: First of all, I was looking at… sub-numeral is under 2, so I just…
Alan: Okay.
Cheryl: …changed 1:47:04 the New Delhi meeting. We have the subcommittee, I’d like to give them the opportunity to let us know what if anything has happened.
Alan: Okay.
Cheryl: Go ahead, Veronica.
Veronica: Okay. Thank you. First of all, I would just like to briefly respond to Alan’s question about if there is going to be another OneDay workshop in New Delhi. And I was just looking through the report that I made. There were 11 members who responded to the survey, a questionnaire as a result of the workshop – three of the members said that the workshop is “extremely useful,” seven said that it was “very useful,” and one member said it was “useful.” So we decided that it would be good to continue, so right now Cheryl, Izumi, and myself, and anyone else who is interested can join the committee. We are working on a scenario for the OneDay – what exactly we are going to cover, what are the issues, how to build the workshop in such a way that it benefits the entire community in the best possible way?
I sent earlier a document that is the language 1:48:23 some organizational development competence. Basically, this is an instrument, it is used by organizations to assess and evaluate working mechanisms, principles, and plan its 1:48:38 _inaudible_ activities. I tried to adjust that instrument to ALAC. I sent the document to everyone. I’m not sure _inaudible_ if you managed to look at the document, but we will try to integrate it somehow in the New Delhi agenda. How? Again, we are working on that. If you have any suggestions and comments, we actually… we are going to use the comments and the suggestions that you shared in your surveys and in the questionnaire as a 1:49:12 result of the OneDay workshop, something that is very worth looking at for the planning of that workshop.
Cheryl, if I may go back a little bit to other matters from previous meetings? Can I?
Cheryl: overtalking 1:49:26
Veronica: Yeah, there are actually issues… cuts out – 3 secs …communication matters. I think that part of the things that I started working on are related to communication matters and to the issues that you highlighted in the agenda. And I would assume the risk to take a lead on that if there is no other volunteer to work on that.
Cheryl: Excellent. That would be most useful.
Veronica: Cheryl, if there are no objections, I would like to take the lead on that I would suggest 1:50:09 short plan that I will share with everyone about how I see that can be implemented.
Cheryl: Okay, that will go… overtalking
Veronica: And by the end of the week, we should definitely a clear plan about the New Delhi meeting.
Cheryl: Excellent. I have… overtalking 1:50:25
Veronica: And again, I will… Yeah, I will try to bring as much input as possible to the agenda for the New Delhi meeting, for the OneDay workshop, actually.
Cheryl: Good. I’ve made notes on points from tonight’s meeting about agenda items and suggested timing, so I will send that across to you as an e-mail so it can be put on it, or perhaps I might make some suggestions onto the wiki, and I would also encourage anybody else who has agenda items which they wish to see dealt with in formal session in New Delhi, that they make those suggestions in the New Delhi meeting page so that the subcommittee can work on those, integrate them, get agreement or otherwise, and that we do not have modification or last-minute changes to agendas when we are getting face-to-face meetings organized.
I would also now like to ask Wendy, who has been very keen to put a couple of points up for activities and actions that she would like to see happen in New Delhi. Wendy, go ahead.
Wendy: Yes, I would suggest, as I just sent a message to the list, that we take advantage of our location at the New Delhi meeting. India being one of the huge hot-spots of internet growth, we should reach out to the Indian internet-using public and invite huge numbers of people to attend the meeting and share their concerns with us. And I would like to hear any suggestions on how we might do that outreach and wouldn’t it be fabulous if we could get 50 internet users lining up at the public mic or 500 people filling one of the rooms to say, “Look, there are concerns from this part of the world that you don’t often hear when sitting in Los Angeles.”
Cheryl: It would indeed be a very rewarding experience. Are there other comments and suggestions from anyone else on that matter?
Wendy: So if anyone has a contact in Indian companies or internet services providers or places where ALAC might conduct that outreach, that would be a good place to start.
Cheryl: Well, we do have of course our ALSes in that area. So perhaps we can inaudible 1:53:22, if Izumi… Izumi, if you and I ensure that at the APRALO meeting on the 10th that that is an action item raised from the ALAC back to the APRALO and the local ALSes, that might be a start point for that. Would you care to make any other suggestions, Izumi?
Izumi: Well, as far as I remember, there’s only one ALS inside India, although we have our sort of NomCom guy from India, Pavan 1:54:04, and we may be able to ask our Indian government people to help locate.
Cheryl: We also have an ISOC chapter in India, as well.
Izumi: Yes, indeed.
Veronica: Can I…? This is Veronica.
Cheryl: Go ahead, Veronica.
Veronica: Actually, what I can see that it’s possible to do, there are many 1:54:25 GKP members, Global Knowledge Partnership members in India, and the organization I run here in Moldova is also part of the GKP, so I can get in touch with the GKP members based in India. A couple of them attended our workshop back in Malaysia. So we can inaudible 1:54:42 be in touch of them. They are specifically focussing on internet and IG-related issues. And then DiploFoundation has a big number of fellows that… specifically within their capacity building program, and we can again get in touch with them and, you know… cuts out.
Cheryl: That would be excellent. Might I suggest that if we are wishing to best involve what might be newcomers to the ICANN process, that at some point early in our formal agenda we take the opportunity to invite any such visitor to join us so that they can feel slightly 1:55:33 briefed, have the opportunity for some background information or some clarification on any points or concerns that they may have, and that they have the knowledge and confidence of being able to go to the public mic and make comments on the ICANN sessions. If we can facilitate in any way, it might be worthwhile trying to plan a short but formal opportunity for that to happen early in the week.
Okay. Travel arrangements including accommodation. I believe we all should at least have an itinerary, although we might be sleeping on the streets.
Alan: I have a comment regarding accommodation.
Cheryl: Go ahead, Alan.
Alan: ICANN has now posted a few lower-price hotels on their website. They are all roughly in the $100 range.
Mohamed El Bashir joined
Alan: What was that?
Cheryl: Somebody has dropped out 1:56:52 and rejoined.
Alan: Ah.
Cheryl Go ahead, Alan.
Mohamed: Sorry. It’s Mohamed. I have been reconnected.
Alan: Okay. Based on the pictures that accompany them, I hope the ALAC is not being put in these hotels. I’d like some assurance, since we seem to be unable to find out where we are staying, that we are staying in reasonable hotels with reasonable internet connectivity and a number of other… and access to food and things like that. It would be really nice if we had some idea. We are travelling in less than a month. Does Nick have any input on what the status of this is? Is Nick here?
Cheryl: Yes, he is. 1:57:38
Nick: I have no news on hotels, including my own, but I am assured that everyone who is staying on ICANN’s dime or with ICANN doing the arranging will be in basically equivalent accommodations. But that’s all I know on the subject.
Cheryl: Oh well…
Alan: The fact that as a GNSO member I had an opportunity to say whether I wanted to be in a hotel weeks ago and ALAC is not yet in that position perturbs me.
Nick: That’s because GNSO do not generally travel on ICANN’s dime to ICANN meetings, and so whether or not members were travelling, that they also are travelling under different arrangements. I don’t believe their hotels are paid by ICANN. I believe they’re only getting economy airfares.
Alan: With the exception of the NomCom members who are equivalent to ALAC. And this year there are people who are getting travel funding.
Fatimata Seye Sylla joined
Cheryl: Okay.
Alan: I don’t… I’m not trying to make a debate out of this. It’s just…
Nick: I’m sorry, Alan, but you’re comparing apples to oranges. The GNSO situation is not the ALAC situation because they don’t generally travel on ALAC’s dime to ICANN meetings… on ICANN’s dime to ICANN meetings and their arrangements are entirely differently, completely.
Cheryl: Okay… overtalking 1:59:10
Nick: You’re not going to get treated worse under ALAC, that’s for sure.
Cheryl: Well, it’s good to hear that.
Alan: That was not the case in Los Angeles, so I’d like some assurance it’s not going to be the case in India where it matters even more.
Nick: That’s what I’m informed of, but again, I don’t do travel, so…
Alan: I understand, but you’re the only ICANN person we have on this call, Nick. laughter
Nick: I know that and I’ve told you that I don’t even know where I’m staying, so, you know…
Alan: I appreciate that, but maybe we need the travel person on these calls.
Cheryl: I will follow up with Stacy in my tomorrow and I will request… I’m sure she’s working hard at it, but I will request that we get some form of finalized information in the next 72 hours.
Nick: I can tell you that the past practice has been that where ICANN is arranging and paying for hotels, they don’t tell people where they are staying until one week before the meeting. I have said to the meeting staff that there are all kinds of issues with that because people have a quite reasonable need to inform the parties of where they are staying, especially in cases where people, for example, are travelling to ICANN meetings as a part of other travel, and so family members, business colleagues and the like all need to know where people are staying. I have been told that that will be taken into account for the New Delhi meeting. I have not been told how that will be taken into account.
Cheryl: Well, it certainly is 2:00:56…
Nick: So… I mean, I have made the point that people need to know these things earlier than one week.
Cheryl: Yeah. Well, for example, Nick, if you would like additional ammunition, I have an opportunity to do things for Austrade who are running activities in exactly the same timeframe in New Delhi. As I don’t know whether I’m going to be a 90-minute bus trip or a 9-minute bus trip away from the convention, there is no way I can say yes to any other meeting during that week.
Nick: I certainly recommend anyone in that sort of position make that clear to Stacy because knowing her as I do, she will definitely do whatever she can to ensure that you get what you need.
Cheryl: Okay. Action item on me, I will follow up with Stacy, and it is heartening the intentions for equity 2:02:02, certainly… overtalking
Nick: Yeah. I mean, and please, I hope everybody understands, it’s not that I’m unsympathetic. Rather the opposite. I mean, completely the opposite. I just, you know…
Alan: Well, Nick…
Nick: If I know… Anytime I know something that I think that you all don’t know, I’ll tell you what it is, and if I don’t know inaudible 2:02:21, I don’t have anything to tell you, unfortunately.
Cheryl: But it does seed back into general dissatisfaction with the preparatory nature of meeting planning.
Nick: I can tell you that they are making real efforts to announce schedules far in advance. I think people will have noted that in Los Angeles, the meeting schedules were published I think some weeks earlier than they had previously been. I think there was the meeting before that schedule as well and they posted like one week before. So, I mean, there really is, you know, an intention and I know there is real work going to do things earlier.
Veronica: Sorry, this is Veronica speaking. See, Nick, in my case, I need to know much more in advance because I need to provide the consulate in Kiev, Ukraine about the hotel that I’m going to stay at, including the address. This is how they treat Moldovans actually. So it’s one of the requirements, I need to provide them with a clear, exact location.
Nick: Yeah, anytime…
Veronica: And I cannot do it now and I cannot apply for the visa yet. And…
Nick: And anytime you have that kind of situation, I’m sure you have, but make sure Stacy knows because again, that just helps her to get things sorted earlier.
Veronica: Okay.
Alan: The other issue, Nick, is that, again, I don’t want to harp on past problems, but if you look at the example in Los Angeles where the ALAC was left effectively without transportation to and from the hotel, the situation is significantly worse in India and we want to make sure that whatever arrangements are made are suitable to us and not just believed to be suitable by staff. You know, in my case for instance, I have meetings starting Saturday morning. If someone tells me “Don’t worry, there will be fine transportation Monday through Thursday,” that’s not going to help me at all.
Nick?: No.
Cheryl: Indeed.
Alan: We’ve already been warned not to take taxis in New Delhi and things like that.
Nick: Yeah. Apparently there are the busses which are features of normal ICANN meetings, but there is also throughout the day and into the night a continuously circulating bus between all the hotels.
Alan: Starting when, though?
Nick: As soon as the morning and afternoon busses are not running.
Alan: No, no. But starting which day?
Cheryl: overtalking 2:04:48 …the Saturday?
Nick: Don’t know.
Alan: Yeah, that’s my worry.
Nick: Yeah.
Cheryl: Okay. Alright. I think we should note that we have pretty much reached our 10 minutes. I should note also that Hawa has been cut off, but I do still have her on Skype. She asked me to make her apology and also her point re: the summit meeting in New Delhi, that she believes that it needs to be a separate agenda item, not part of the OneDay workshop. So Veronica, if you would perhaps take that on board.
I would like to call for any other comments, questions, or issues you would like me to raise with Stacy or that you would like to raise regarding any work the subcommittee doing the New Delhi planning before we close off.
Izumi: If I may…
Cheryl: Please.
Izumi: This is Izumi. Although I’m not in any sense an official liaison to GAC, the GAC, but I’d like to take my liberty to ask the counterpart 2:06:11 _inaudible_ as a sort of informal contact, if there is a possibility to have a joint meeting between ALAC and GAC in New Delhi.
Cheryl: I think that would be well worthwhile. Does the rest of the meeting agree?
Sébastien: Yes, and even if you are not the liaison, because there is no counterpart for the liaison, you are the liaison from our side I think. It’s not because we have no counterpart and we can’t have a liaison to the GAC, and I am sure that they are willing to have one in the near future.
Izumi: Okay. Thanks.
Veronica: Yes, I support Izumi’s proposal.
Cheryl: Yes, I think it would be well worthwhile.
Are there any other matters that anyone wishes to raise regarding New Delhi planning, remembering that we should all use the New Delhi meeting page to make agenda suggestions and other comments? pause In the absence of that, at three minutes… no, I would make it pretty much spot on three minutes after our extension time – I apologize for the extension on the extension – I’ll call for any other final comments from anybody. pause And in the absence of any comments, declare the meeting closed.
Sébastien: Thank you, Cheryl.
Alan: Goodbye all.
Veronica: Thank you.
Izumi?: Bye.
Beau:?: Bye bye.
End of Audio