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Annalisa Rogers: Okay let's go ahead and begin and we will start with the roll call then. On the line we have myself, Annalisa; we have Gisella Gruber-White, Gordon Chilcott, Olivier Crepin Leblond and also in the chat room and who else do we have on the line?
Gisella Gruber-White: On today's Work Team B teleconference on Wednesday January 26, 2011 we have Fouad Bashwa who is on mute for the time being, Darlene Thompson, so it should read Annalisa Roger, Olivier Crepin Leblond, Gordon Chilcott, Dev Anand Teelucksingh has just joined as well.
We have apologies today noted from Wolf Ludwig, Yaovi Atohoun, Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Michel Chunong, [unclear] Carlos Aguirre and from staff today we have Seth Greene, Matthias Langenegger and myself, Gisella Gruber-White. Can I also please just remind you all to state your names when speaking? This will assist with the transcript for it to be more accurate, thank you. Over to you Annalisa.
Annalisa Rogers: Thank you Gisella. Okay so the agenda items, #2 are review of ALS from January 12th meeting. The review from last meeting? Okay well we've got - actually I'm not sure about that. I'm sorry I'm not prepared for that. Seth do you have something you'd like to add? Are you on the line?
Seth Greene: Hi Annalisa, sure I'm happy to quickly go through the AIs from last meeting. The link to it everyone if you go to the pod on the lower left of your - those of us who are in the Adobe Chat room there is a Work Team B AIs 12 January link in that pod for anyone who would like to. But I will try to make this very quick. I had been asked to send some resources around that hopefully everyone’s either been working with for quite a while or has been able to look at.
Those include the URL to the main Work Team B workspace and Sandra’s Power Point presentation on her capacity building proposal. You’ve received those during the last couple of weeks, probably a couple of times. There were also some agenda items that I was asked to put on today's agenda which I was don’t need to go through, they are on the agenda and we will be getting to all of those.
Heidi was asked to check on the status on ICANN’s language services policy that’s been in progress. And she has checked with Christina. The hope is that the languages policy will be completed by the San Francisco meeting; it's now called the Language Services Policy because it incorporates not just translation but also interpretation reflecting the new department within communications. That’s been done.
Heidi or Christina is getting us a link to the current draft of it that the work team will be able to look at if it wishes and Christina is happy to join Work Team B in one of its calls or in San Francisco to go over the new Language Services Policy with us, if the team would like that. I was to create a Confluence page summarizing all the potential initiatives and proposals that Work Team B has discussed in past meetings. And that is now attached to the main work team workspace under the title Work Team B Proposal in Development.
So you can take a look at that if you haven’t already, that was also sent around this week. And then there was an AI for all members of the work team. Hopefully people got to this and that was actually to read and review that Work Team B Proposal in Development new Confluence page. That’s everything Annalisa.
Annalisa Rogers: Thank you Seth. Thank you very much and the Work Team B page does look great and it has all the things and hopefully everyone had a chance to go there, so thank you Seth.
Seth Greene: Sure.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay are there any comments or does anyone want to add anything to the review?
Gordon Chilcott: I was looking into the B thing.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay.
Seth Greene: There is a link for that as well on the lower left, Work Team B Proposals and Development.
Annalisa Rogers: Lower left?
Seth Greene: Of the AC room yes, we’re in the regular web links pod.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay I don’t see that but -
Seth Greene: Oh Annalisa are you in the AC Room? I don’t see you as being there. Oh I'm sorry yes I do and in fact I'll graduate you to a host.
Annalisa Rogers: Well I do see the web links too.
Seth Greene: The third from the bottom - I'm sorry the fourth from the bottom?
Annalisa Rogers: Oh the draft report?
Seth Greene: No the fourth from the bottom in my pod is Work Team B Proposals and Development.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay I see that there, okay good thank you. Okay so let's move to the items for discussion, so Seth that will be you again. Let's see Work Team B’s Proposals and Development. Should we click on that Seth as you forward?
Seth Greene: Actually those are resources but you don’t - for the very brief information that I need to give you, no you don’t need to click on anything. I just wanted to make sure that Work Team B and all of the work teams are up to speed and in the same place as far as knowing about the deadlines and final reporting, what's being discussed in one work team basically affects everyone.
What that is is the following, the only deadline for the improvements work teams that was important to seek the SIC was for Recommendation 2, the At-Large Selected Director. For all the other recommendations, those for Work Team B, for example, the deadline has been self imposed only as the end of March. There is probably some but not a lot of wiggle room with that.
It would of course be convenient to have all the recommendations resolved and discussed by San Francisco. It looks as though because some work teams, including Work Team B actually are lagging probably a bit behind that hope. That’s probably not going to be the case but certainly we should think of San Francisco as a target for having much of our work done, if not all of it.
We are now, as far as the form of the final reporting and this is the final reporting to actually the Board and the SIC I'm talking about not final reporting to ALAC which Olivier will be addressing us on in a bit. We’re looking into the form of the final reporting. One issue which is both a pro and a con is that it's been so long actually since any improvements review project has been completed, believe it or not that there's no reasonable precedent.
However, the seat on the Board did give our project fairly high marks on some of our earlier status reports. There is always the possibility of using the format of those which was basically a short report looking at each recommendation with all of the details that can be read very easily and quickly which is something the Board appreciates I've learned, with all of the details in annexes in the back.
Of course as far as the final reporting goes there will certainly be some leeway the work teams will be able to decide upon and the writing committees within the work teams will be able to decide upon. I believe that’s everything Annalisa, thank you very much.
Annalisa Rogers: Thank you Seth, do I have any questions or comments for this item from anybody on the call? Well thank you very much for that Seth. We get to move on, #4 Need to Begin Interacting with and Making Proposals to the ALAC. And Cheryl is absent from the call, so Olivier can I turn it over to you please?
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Thank you very much Annalisa and I will first warn you that it was Cheryl that put that item in the agenda and I just piggybacked on it and Cheryl unfortunately is unable to make it so I will try and fill in as much as I can. Although just take this as a guideline as to how I personally see things to be moving on from where we are at now.
Seth since you are aware of the process and so on, if you want to jump in at any time, if I'm going way off course then please feel free to do so. Obviously those working teams that have to be set up need to have some kind of finalization and some kind of action plan as to how they will be implemented. Once when they reach their conclusion and with regards to any improvements in At-Large it is the At-Large Advisory Committee that makes the final vote on what gets carried through and how budgets and the strategy will then fit what needs to be done with ICANN and what proposals need to be done so that we actually obtain the budget for the improvements that we want.
So one of the things that needs to be done, is to obviously translating these Work Team B proposals and development into proposals for ALAC and for ALAC to be able to have all the information for ALAC to carry through as proposals that will come in in future strategic and financial plans for At-Large. Seth is that pretty much the sort of scale that we’re looking at?
Seth Greene: I think that’s exactly what I would’ve imagined yes, thanks Olivier.
Olivier Crepin Leblond: So the way that I would imagine the best interaction to be really is to stop looking at the proposals and development sheet which is actually very good because it's got everything that your group has worked on in there and start perhaps by indentifying the proposals which are already mature in there.
And for one I can imagine the capacity engagement which Sandra Hoferichter - the capacity building which Sandra Hoferichter has done a presentation on for example, that is something which I believe is mature enough to be sent on to the ALAC and perhaps then studied in further ways so as to start a process whereas the ALAC can make a proposal to ICANN.
In fact what we have found is that some of the proposals that we have and as I say At-Large, all of us, have are sometimes not only going to be possible under the At-Large Advisory Committee funding but actually as part of a wider campaign that works with the overall strategic design of ICANN, the overall strategy of ICANN in being able to expand its knowledge of the world and expand the world’s knowledge of ICANN. It goes in the two ways.
That’s one example that I can think of, reading quickly through the sheet. But obviously there are more parts in there including for example, review of the technology and you also have to identify those of our recommendations that need or that might need an actual by law change or improvement in ALAC. Am I missing anything Seth from this?
Seth Greene: No I don’t believe so Olivier. If you're finished I will just ask a question or two?
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Please yes.
Seth Greene: Thanks very much Olivier I was just wondering when you say - the sheet that you're looking at is that the simplified outline or is that the proposals and development?
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Proposals and development is the one I'm looking at now.
Seth Greene: Thank you Olivier, also it sounds as though what you're suggesting might be useful to consider, should the work teams use the same budget templates for its proposals to the ALAC? Or do you think that’s not necessary?
Olivier Crepin Leblond: I would think that certainly there is - this new budget template we've only just been given a short while ago and obviously there might be some wisdom into having a budget template such as that. I trust the wisdom of ICANN finance to think that this is a good idea. And it's certainly something which would be helpful for ALAC to be able to get a good idea of how much things might cost and what resources would be required for specific recommendations.
Definitely that’s an excellent idea to use the template. And by the way, when I mean use the template, use the templates as part of a wider proposal obviously, the template being one of the parts that would be presented to the ALAC.
Seth Greene: Thank you Olivier, as far as using the template do you think the work teams need to actually try to in a very accounting way, come up with an actual financial budgetary figure for their proposals? Or is that something that the ALAC can help them with or actually do?
Olivier Crepin Leblond: That’s a very good question and frankly either. If you're able - within the work team you have the knowledge of how much it costs, then by all means give guideline costs and costing in the list.
If on the other hand, you do not know how much this would cost, for example, if it involves rental of a room during an ICANN meeting and having staff on duty and translation facilities and so on, which are services already provide by ICANN then just leave it blank because that will actually be - the actual numbers will be filled in by the finance staff who have much knowledge into estimating how much these things cost.
We've asked the same question in ALAC in fact in the filing of our finance plans. And we've been told that if we’re not sure, just let them do it and they will come up with the clearest answer, especially when one looks at costs being different from meeting to meeting.
Seth Greene: Thank you very much Olivier, yes.
Annalisa Rogers: Thank you Olivier, thank you very much for that. And Seth thank you too for your comments and clarifications on things. does anybody else on the call have any comments on the work Work Team B is doing or anything that Olivier has just explained to us in terms of the process going to ALAC for budget and so forth, any comments? Okay thank you.
Olivier Crepin Leblond: If I may just -
Annalisa Rogers: Yes go ahead.
Olivier Crepin Leblond: If I may just add one thing, just reiterate one thing with regards to any bylaw changes, if there is such a requirement, prioritize this for it to be sent to ALAC as soon as possible. Because we might then be able to treat this right away at the next meeting in San Francisco and take it as a priority item which we can start the process. Bylaw changes always take time.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay.
Olivier Crepin Leblond: It takes time because it requires feedback from the community; it requires a whole process which sometimes takes a while. So this is why I'm basically recommending that this would be moved ASAP.
Annalisa Rogers: Thank you so much Olivier. I actually don’t see bylaws on our agenda so I'm going to take this moment to ask if there is anybody - oh I see Seth has his hand up?
Seth Greene: Thank you Annalisa, Olivier just one more question if you don’t mind. Are you talking about bylaw changes in the ICANN bylaws or even bylaw changes just for example in the ALAC bylaws?
Olivier Crepin Leblond: I would imagine that the group doesn’t need to go as far as having bylaw changes in the ICANN bylaws because the ICANN - if I remember correctly, the only recommendation that required an interaction with ICANN was the one to deal with the At-Large Selected Board Director. I'm saying specifically for At-Large bylaws.
Seth Greene: At-Large bylaws?
Olivier Crepin Leblond: I might have missed something. If there is an ICANN bylaw change required then by all means bring this forward as well but I'm afraid I haven’t had the time to read enough through the documentation for Work Team B that there is something to do with ICANN bylaws themselves.
Seth Greene: Right, actually truthfully I was thinking of some of the other work teams, but I understand.
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Okay.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay thank you and Sebastian has his hand up, go ahead please.
Sebastian Bachollet: Yes thank you. I have to think about - your request I am here to say something about the subject. But generally speaking I think I need to remove myself to this underground and very important job done by ALAC because of my new position. But taking this opportunity to say one thing, Olivier it might be also important to see if there are some bylaw changing within the RALO who could have as a RALO singed an MOU with the ICANN.
Those changes sometime needs to be dealt with the ICANN or with the Board even if it's not the ICANN bylaws themselves. Then it really depends on what level of changes, what is the agreement within the MOU between the RALO and ICANN and what we want as an end user to achieve. And it's not just the ICANN bylaws by themselves that could have [inaudible 00:21:45] with the Board, thank you.
Annalisa Rogers: Thank you Sebastian. So Sebastian did I hear you correctly that due to your commitment now as a Board Director, that you do wish to be removed from Work Team B?
Sebastian Bachollet: You know, generally speaking we not supposed - and it's not just me - but we are not supposed to participate to any working groups. And I will not follow these rules so much but yeah I think it's better if I am not. because for example, one example, if you come with some proposal about budget, as I am a member of the Board Finance Committee and it will come to us and then I can't be at the same time pushing for something or agreeing with something at the ALAC, At-Large level or this working group.
And to be in the decision part at the Board level. And it's better for all of us that I am not participating. But that’s not a problem for today. I will not give something about finance and I will try to keep out of any trouble with that. But generally speaking I think it's better. I'm sorry for that and I hope that you will find somebody else to take my seat and then to do the work, thank you very much.
Annalisa Rogers: Well thank you Sebastian. And we thoroughly understand your position and we respect your time commitment on the Board and want to thank you for everything you’ve already contributed to Work Team B. We will enjoy your presence here on the rest of this call and will take you off of our usual roll call for future meetings. And Olivier you have your hand up?
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Thank you Annalisa and I just wanted to say I totally understand Sebastian’s position and he has done so much for us. I'm sure that he will continue doing a lot in the future where he is now. But coming back to the discussions that we were having earlier with Recommendation 3 on the Work Team B proposals and development, there was one task which I wanted to give a little more background to because it actually fits along with this sort of direction that we want to take.
And that’s the task 3.1.1 in the subsection of removing any obstacles in ALS, RALO, ALAC structure. And task 3.1.1 effectively says “reviewing permission flow between the three tiers of At-Large structure, ALS, RALO, ALAC to identify possible improvements to information dissemination.” One of the things that we are going to push for is a lot more ALS and RALO involvement with ALAC decisions.
The proposals as you may have noticed the proposals for finance and for the strategic plan was filed with ICANN. The finance [inaudible 00:25:21] plan will be filed by the end of the month. those proposals are actually being sourced at the edges, sourced from the ALSs, from the RALOs and ALAC serves more as a collating organization or structure that takes all the input and maybe adds a little bit more to it but certainly does not act as a filter as such.
In other words it doesn’t start taking something and block it and say “No we don’t like that, we want to do something else.” The real decision comes from the edges. So that’s something to really take into account when you will present the view of the information flow or the improvement of information flow between the three tiers of the At-Large structure.
And I think that this recommendation from your group will work very well with - will really resonate with the direction that ALAC wants to take.
Annalisa Rogers: Thank you for that Olivier, thank you very much for that insight. And that’s very helpful, so appreciate that. Seth would you like to add to that?
Seth Greene: If I can just add one thing to what Olivier and Sebastian were saying about the bylaw changes actually. I just want to mention that Fouad is on the call yet but he has mentioned and reminded me that related to our earlier review of the RALO bylaws, specifically concerning independent membership that is for users who are not members of ALSs, there might be out of this work team some bylaw changes needed there. I just wanted to remind the work team of that having been reminded of it myself by Fouad.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay thank you Seth. So there are some bylaw changes of Work Team B?
Seth Greene: I believe Fouad’s thinking there might be. That depending on what we want to do with the - as far as making proposals regarding making more consistent the requirements for membership of individuals outside of ALSs. Depending on how that wants to go, they would certainly require so RALO bylaw changes if nothing else.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay so are -
Seth Greene: Let me leave that to Fouad to discuss when the time is right.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay thank you, so Fouad would you like to step in right now?
Fouad Bashwa: Yep can you hear me?
Annalisa Rogers: Yes.
Fouad Bashwa: Okay there is an [inaudible 00:28:22] in response to a question that -
Annalisa Rogers: I'm sorry Fouad can you speak either a little louder or closer to your mic?
Fouad Bashwa: Okay yes can you hear me now?
Annalisa Rogers: We can hear you but you're not - if you could be a little louder that would be helpful.
Fouad Bashwa: [Inaudible 00:28:44]. Can you hear me better now?
Annalisa Rogers: Much better.
Fouad Bashwa: Okay on the proposal is basically it's an idea and the discussion in [inaudible 00:29:05]. And it was noted by me as part of the [inaudible 00:29:12] charge of the RALO. The proposal suggests that there should be a possibility for individual, the end users to join in the APRALO because in most circumstances in Asia users are not represented by formal organizational structures. [Inaudible 00:29:41] and mostly with groups without recognized organizational structures.
But there would be looking at joining into the ICANN policy [inaudible 00:29:58]. So the proposal suggests the membership be [inaudible 00:30:06] and in order to bring them into the process of the RALO what we would do is that we would [inaudible 00:30:17] ALSs at the country level. This each [inaudible 00:30:22] ALS will - once it has a certain membership number will be given an [inaudible 00:30:31].
Which will [inaudible 00:30:33] ALS. [Inaudible 00:30:38] ALS is [inaudible 00:30:41] or given country it will be all [inaudible 00:30:46] At-Large Pakistan and At-Large India, At-Large Nepal and so forth. The idea was to allow [inaudible 00:30:56] users to come in and without disturbing [inaudible 00:31:00] in APRALO. The individuals will be grouped up into an ALAC structure and then that group from a country integrated into an ALS will have a single [inaudible 00:31:22].
So I'm [inaudible 00:31:26] to undergo a detailed [inaudible 00:31:30] within APRALO in form of testing this to the membership of APRALO, the ALS membership and the vote on [inaudible 00:31:40]. But hopefully before next month’s meeting, I'll have this [inaudible 00:31:47] and a possible voting for ALSs would have taken place by then. So this is one of the suggestions which might encourage some form of modification if it went to the APRALO [inaudible 00:32:08]. Thank you.
Annalisa Rogers: Thank you for that Fouad. Fouad I actually have a question for you, so in NORALO we do have the individual membership outside of ALSs. And I was under the impression that was due to our bylaws here in NORALO, North American RALO. And so does this question I suppose is for your Fouad or Olivier, but for APRALO, does this require a bylaw change at the ALAC level to include individual members in APRALO?
Fouad Bashwa: No I don’t think in particular in ALAC because I was still unsure about this question, I thought it was more of a question to ask [inaudible 00:33:18] possible bylaw change. Right now, I think that only NORALO has this affiliated and nonaffiliated in the individual membership model. And yes this is a RALO level [inaudible 00:33:35] and what I would suggesting is also a [inaudible 00:33:42] modification which could be used as an example [inaudible 00:33:49].
So it may be a proposal, but I don’t know if ALAC actually has a bylaw which only [inaudible 00:33:57] organizations [inaudible 00:33:57] and whether ALAC has to modify that bylaw in the event [inaudible 00:34:03] individual members because an individual membership application would become a hassle for ALAC to approve.
That would be something in my personal feeling [inaudible 00:34:22] to approve individual memberships. But I'm not sure about that at the moment. I still need to do a bit more research, thank you.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay thank you Fouad. Matthias your hand was up and Olivier is after Matthias.
Matthias Langenegger: Thanks Annalisa. Actually I think Olivier may want to say the same thing, so Olivier if you want to please go ahead.
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Thank you Matthias, I'm not sure what I should say.
Matthias Langenegger: I was just going to give a -
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Were you going to speak about EURALO background as well?
Matthias Langenegger: Yes.
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Okay whichever. I can give a quick rundown of what's going on at EURALO. There has also been much discussion in EURALO to have individual members being able to vote and to take part into the decision process of EURALO. And to that extent there has been a working team looking at the various options and two options were looked at specifically.
One being the NORALO option where individual members can join in a specific class of membership and that’s already something that’s in use in NORALO, the other one was to create an ALS. And note that I said create one ALS, not one in every country. And I think that Fouad you mentioned one in each country, so you would have an ALS in Pakistan, an ALS in Hong Kong, an ALS in Thailand. Was that the gist you wanted, one per country?
Fouad Bashwa: [Inaudible 00:36:06] it actually specifically having one in every country. [Inaudible 00:36:16] you can have a group of internet users join us in APRALO. And the [inaudible 00:36:23] arises for them to vote.
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Right.
Fouad Bashwa: So we can get them structure to which they can vote in because how does the [inaudible 00:36:35] process formulate because you have [inaudible 00:36:38]. One voice is coming as group of voices. And one voice is coming as an individual voice. So the idea of [inaudible 00:36:53] is to give that one voice the possibility to adding up to other voices from the same country and [inaudible 00:37:03].
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Okay, yes we didn’t look at it on a per country basis in EURALO. We actually looked at creating one At-Large structure that would be created by EURALO with bylaws that EURALO would define. And then this At-Large structure would collect or be the entry point for all individual members who wish to participate. There would then elect a Chair, a Secretary or whatever position would’ve been defined by the bylaws for this. And from that point on that ALS would have the same voting capability as any other ALS in the region.
So that would effectively encompass or integrate the wishes and the votes from individual users wishing to join. One of the things we were very careful about was not to make the process such that it would actually penalize At-Large structures which joined. In other words, we still see the main way of getting involved being joining an At-Large structure, an organization, a consumer organization, whichever At-Large structures constitutes the membership of that region.
We see that as being the primary way of getting involved. Because obviously we wouldn’t want to take away members from those structures out there. That’s why we decided to have just one At-Large structure to start with and not one per country.
Fouad Bashwa: Can I ask a question?
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Yes sure.
Fouad Bashwa: [Inaudible 00:38:56] confused about is if [inaudible 00:39:00] exists and it has individual memberships from all across the EURALO region, it will have [inaudible 00:39:11] kind of situation [inaudible 00:39:16] where you have members from all over Europe. Now that hasn’t [inaudible 00:39:25] voice group becomes a bit too big doesn’t it? I don’t have words to describe it.
Olivier Crepin Leblond: That was -
Fouad Bashwa: Yes see [inaudible 00:39:34].
Olivier Crepin Leblond: That was a question which was asked by one of the people but if you want we can take this offline because I think we may be veering a little bit away from the gist of this meeting. But just to say with regards to bylaw changes that yes this would require a bylaw change in EURALO in the EURALO bylaws. And so we are looking at that and we might be submitting some changes. But it will not require any changes in bylaws at ICANN level.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay so for clarity on the end of Work Team B, if so is this a type of bylaw submission Olivier that you were recommending earlier that if we do have bylaw changes that we put that at the top of our priority list?
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Yes.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay.
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Yes please because it does take a while and the other complexity is that each RALO has written their own bylaws. And so you will find that the bylaws of one RALO are sometimes completely different to the bylaws of another one. And so it's a case by case basis. You can't just have one to change all of the bylaws across all of the RALOs. That is not the way that things work. It's RALOs that actually initiate this.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay thank you so much. I'm going to take one more comment from Sebastian and then we have to move on to our next item. Go ahead Sebastian.
Sebastian Bachollet: Thank you and just to say two things. the first one is I think it's important if there are discussions, for example, as a Secretariat coordination level of the RALOs about these changes to have - to try to find a way to do the same in each region. And the second, be careful in how you implement that not to change any I will say results of votes because if we - if any region creates 10 new ALSs it changes the overall structure of the voting within the At-Large and it could create some trouble for a specific engagement of votes. You have to have that in mind too, thank you.
Annalisa Rogers: Thank you Sebastian and that is a good point that Olivier brought up that by having an ALS for all individual members as opposed to each country you're not taking away voting power from existing ALSs. So that’s something to keep in mind. Okay so thank you and as far as an action item on that Fouad, I heard that you said you needed to do some more research. I guess is that something you would want to follow through and then maybe get back to Seth as far as timing on submission of this bylaw or timing of when to put it on the next working team meeting?
Fouad Bashwa: Actually the discussion or the suggestion about this particular idea is based on the fact that if we do have that many interested people wanting to join APRALO then an [inaudible 00:43:17] would be made. It's not that [inaudible 00:43:19] per country. [Inaudible 00:43:23], so I'm still in discussion. And this will be somewhere by the end of February that I can share that we have a possible [inaudible 00:43:39] on this.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay thank you Fouad. We will look forward to seeing that item on the agenda in the future when you're ready, thank you very much for that. Sebastian is your hand up or was that from last time? Okay alright so thank you everybody, let's move on to the next one which is are we on #6 here?
Seth Greene: I believe we are on #5.
Annalisa Rogers: Number 5, the ALS Survey, sorry and how it relates to Recommendation 3. Olivier did talk about - he did speak on removing obstacles. Are there - oh Dev, I'm sorry, Dev that’s you for 10 minutes.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Oh.
Annalisa Rogers: Go ahead.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay thank you Annalisa. Well I have to say I'm probably not as well prepared for this topic as I would like to be. But I would like to go to the actual survey report and I think it's in the agenda page. There were like several questions which touched on the ALS, ALAC, RALO structure. Typically and I will jump to Question 12 which is probably the most direct question which talks to this structure.
There was a question on a scale of 1 to 5, how well is your ALS integrated in the overall ALAC RALO ALS policy structure? And the majority said that - 22% of the ALSs feel isolated and apart from ICANN, At-Large and ALAC. And 32% are like in-between. They're not completely isolated. But they are not well integrated. Now there wasn’t any method of actually capturing specifically why they felt that way.
So one of the recommendations we came out with was that the activities of At-Large need to be organized and documented for ALSs not directly involved in the activities to be able to find and review. And so this would allow and increase the possibility for such ALSs to participate in the ICANN policy process in the RALOs and ALAC.
Okay so and one of the other things also that [inaudible 00:46:31] global partnerships meeting in these regions was that typically ALSs are not even aware that ICANN representatives are in their region or even in their country. And I think what has to happen is there has to be much more feedback going - coming from global partnerships so that when there's a representative in the country the ALSs are made aware so they can informally meet with the representatives and just have a discussion of what's happening and what their concerns are in their region and so forth.
That’s something I personally discovered and have been working hard on. With regards to the actual things regarding the structure of ALSs and I would now just take you to Question - I'm sorry I'm jumping to different points here because I don’t want to go through the entire survey. I'm going to jump to Question 1, what happened was the majority of the representatives - let me - Question 1 talks about the [inaudible 00:48:00] of ALS representatives.
Now about 1/3 of ALSs don’t have a secondary contact. And about 75% of ALSs don’t have a tertiary contact. And what was the option this means was that due to the ALSs size and capacity for persons within the ALS to be able to dedicate the time and effort to follow and [inaudible 00:48:25] to the ICANN At-Large - ALSs in question, many of the same ALSs in Question 9 simply just when we asked for other persons in your At-Large structure to be notified about public comments, practically all of them answered the primary contact only.
So it means there are not enough person within an ALS to really take part in the At-Large activities. It’s only relying a lot on the primary contact to actually be the person to actually get involved. And then I will just jump quickly now to Question 6A, how often does the ALS meet?
Most ALSs only meet every two to three months but the majority of those ALS meetings being face to face or teleconferences or web conferences. I mean if you think about it, a lot of the policy work is a very [inaudible 00:49:50] which is 30 days to respond to a policy or for comment and so forth. It's very hard for those ALSs to then disseminate information about the ICANN and At-Large at such a special meeting.
And if they are meeting face to face or conferencing so infrequently, it's going to be hard to have on their agenda all the ICANN issues that are also comments and so on and so forth. So an ALS that only meets every two to three months is going to be hard for them to solicit comments about ICANN policy that is due for comments - that comments are due in 30 days. So one of the recommendations we have to look at is looking at the availability of online material.
And also look at ways to encourage the ALSs to allow its members to directly to subscribe to ICANN and RALO updates and distribute it among ICANN communication tools which is in Question 5. And what will hopefully happen is that this can possibly lead to formal deliberations of ICANN and At-Large policy issues within the At-Large structure. And then those persons can then become more - can give more input to the ICANN policy work. And jumping back to Question 5 which I think is the last question I will look at, Question 5 deals with the communication tools.
A lot of people use Mailing List, Skype and Facebook. Well Twitter was 4th in that. But was very low in terms of RSS feeds. And I would say that RSS feeds are typically the best way to keep track of all the changes in ICANN especially to the Confluence Wiki and so forth. Because once changes are made to the Confluence Wiki it's not like everybody gets email updates about all those changes. So there has to be some sort of education effort to show to how ALSs can keep track of changes to the At-Large Wiki.
And now we should also look at ways of the communication tools. Since most of the ALSs have blogs maybe tools such as recommended by this work team like [inaudible 00:52:28], content can be syndicated rather than directly into the blogs and so forth so that ALSs - a single ALS representative does not have to be [inaudible 00:52:41] person to actually take that information and reforward it or repackage it for their blog or their mailing list and so on.
You have to try to make it as easy as possible for the flow of information. So I'm just going to stop there at this point and ask any questions because I don’t want to jump into all the different communication tools. And I'll try to put something in writing for the next meeting [inaudible 00:53:15].
Annalisa Rogers: Dev thank you very much, that was really informative, discussion on the importance of removing the obstacles as Recommendation 3 has. And you’ve really sort of painted a picture on how these ALS pages and posture us and some of these other recommendations that we've already made are actually going to be pretty crucial.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Yes I think so.
Annalisa Rogers: To get information from the bottom up, yeah.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Yes.
Annalisa Rogers: And I also would like to reiterate one point that you made, I hadn’t really hard before but was to encourage ALS members to directly subscribe to ICANN news feeds and updates. I think that makes a tremendous amount of sense because then they're right in the conversation in real time. And that way when they hear from the ALS it's already making sense. They already have that information you get the participation will grow that way. Excellent report, does anyone have any questions for Dev please?
And I realize I don’t see the people on the call so go ahead and speak up if anyone wants to jump in here with a comment. Okay well thank you Dev. We look forward to getting some notes then. I guess you had mentioned you would write some notes down and I think that’s definitely going to be part of our presentation with some of our recommendations that are already on the board, so thank you.
So #6 next steps regarding Recommendation 9, ICANN should strengthen its translation and interpretation tools particularly related to ICANN’s in progress languages services policy. And we’re almost out of time but Fouad can I turn that over to you? Do you have any quick remarks on that?
Fouad Bashwa: Please repeat the question.
Annalisa Rogers: It says Co-Chairs 10 minutes, we don’t really have 10 minutes but next steps regarding Recommendation 9, that’s ICANN should strengthen its translation and interpretation tools particularly related to ICANN’s in progress language service policy.
Fouad Bashwa: I think I don’t know what I should say on this, but I think this is [inaudible 00:55:44] recommendations by every RALO about strengthening the translation and interpretation tools. I think - I don’t know how to put this but there is a strong [inaudible 00:55:59] on this already in a form of [inaudible 00:56:03]. So I think you will have to ask Olivier for his input on this - how it should be presented because I really don’t have an idea on how it should be presented.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay, fair enough. Go ahead Olivier.
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Thank you Annalisa. There are some regions which are more effected than others by this, this could be LACRALO and also the AFRALO make extensive use of these tools. And from what I understand there is already some work going on with regards to that. Language services have - are just about to implement a new software to automatically translate the lists which LACRALO is using. And I also understand that the translation team is going to remain the same now for all the meetings and for the conference calls. I'm not sure whether Matthias would know more about this?
Matthias Langenegger: No I'm not quite sure. I don’t think I could answer that at this point.
Olivier Crepin Leblond: Work is in progress.
Annalisa Rogers: Work is in progress, okay thank you Olivier.
Olivier Crepin Leblond: It's already in progress, and thanks.
Annalisa Rogers: Thank you Olivier and Fouad. Moving to #7, report on ALSs interest in specific planned use of AC chat rooms. It was from an action item last time. Myself and Gordon agreed to check back with our ALSs and see what we could come up with. And Gordon if you don’t mind, I'll go first. Mine is really short. I did go back to San Francisco Bay ISOC, is my ALS in NORALO and I mentioned the opportunity, so there actually was - it sort of came up on a surprise. They thought about it.
Our Board discussed it. I wasn’t to be honest; they needed more creativity and ideas of what I thought we would use the chat room for. I feel like I needed a few more sales points. They appreciated that it may be available and I know we haven’t heard back from Heidi on that yet. But as of now, they said it sounds good for in the future but it didn’t stick.
We didn’t have something to actually pin it on. And I think if I were to have a specific purpose or a specific event that was tying in with our RALO or even ALAC that would sort of be a more interesting introduction to the concept because all by itself it didn’t really stick. So that’s what happened on my end. It was not a no, but it was certainly not something they were jumping at. Gordon do you have any comments about your experience talking about the opportunity of using an Adobe Chat room?
Gordon Chilcott: It caused a lot of discussion. The end is not right now. We really don’t have much use for it because all of our meetings are face to face. Down the road that may change a little bit. But by down the road I'm talking something along the order of two years. So there is not a lot of discussion about it. There was some grumbling about the possibility that Adobe Connect might not work terribly well in the environments we use.
We’re an open source society. I think I managed to comfort them on that end. I'm using Linux as I speak to you right now. The idea of Confluence pages was rather better received. But they're questioned back to ALAC is what about a mailing list? I think what they want to be able to be alarmed when something new comes up which brings us back to what Dev was speaking about earlier on.
I'm going to be understood in Dev’s notes and Dev if you get them to us, I will take them to the next meeting of our organization which should be February 8th if I remember correctly, and see how those are received. But that’s about it for right now.
Annalisa Rogers: Thank you Gordon, that’s informative. And Dev is that something that might be possible for Gordon to get some notes by February 8th?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay I wasn’t quite hearing Gordon unfortunately. I think I understand he wants some information regarding the surveys, is that correct?
Annalisa Rogers: Yes, yes.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay of course, certainly.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay I would be interested in that too. Maybe we could make that available before our next Work Team B meeting at your convenience Dev.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay, so thank you Gordon. Any comments from anybody on line regarding Adobe Chat rooms? I see - oh yes who is this?
Darlene Thompson: This is Darlene Thompson. I just have a quick question. What exactly were you taking back to your ALSs? Like what question about the Adobe Connect room are you asking your ALS?
Annalisa Rogers: Well Darlene I mentioned to them that it was an offer coming from ALAC that the room could be made available to the ALS as sort of a free opportunity to use a chat room if that would be helpful to the ALS for any purpose of their choice.
Darlene Thompson: Oh I see. So for like an ALS monthly meeting or something like that?
Annalisa Rogers: Exactly, yes. so we get together in our own - we use Skype and we use face to face meetings and we have a relatively - it's just not - it wasn’t a timely thing sort of like Gordon said. They were interested and they thought it was a possibility and it's kind of on the back burner. But I think if I were to come up with an actual event that was maybe a widespread event so that it would require many people needing to be in the same space for a discussion then that might bring it back to light, they would be interested. So -
Darlene Thompson: I would have to say that one of the - I'm kind of involved with two different ALSs and I think that one of ours would definitely be interested in that because we have monthly telephone conferences and we have people that show up to it that are all across Canada. There is usually around six or 10 of us that meet. But I think that we would find that useful anyway.
Annalisa Rogers: Oh good, okay. Okay excellent well we will get that information back to Heidi. Seth can we make a note? Because I know we need to coordinate with Heidi. She was going to get some further information on it on her end which we need before we can move forward.
Seth Greene: Yes, absolutely. The only information I believe Heidi was going to get is whether we could offer it and basically we can offer it.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay, so maybe Seth just as an action item just put on there as how to go about that. And then Darlene can go back and confirm with her people and we will have information for you Darlene next time on how to move forward.
Darlene Thompson: Thank you that would be useful.
Annalisa Rogers: Okay. Sebastian you’ve got your hand up?
Sebastian Bachollet: Yes please. I'm happy that Darlene said what she said. I wanted to jump in that and say that if she takes the example of organizations who are really very narrow geographically they will maybe not need. But if they are spread around a larger country it will be much more useful. And the second point is that if you need to work on a document together it could have some interest. And to finally say maybe the monthly meeting of the ISOC barrier using this type of tool could open the participation to people abroad, such as [inaudible 01:04:53]. Thank you very much.
Annalisa Rogers: Thank you Sebastian. Okay so is there any other business before we close? Okay well thank you everybody for your time and participation and thank you Olivier and Sebastian for joining the call and Seth for all of your work and Mathias. Okay so I guess we will sign off until next time.
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