Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, fantastic. Well good morning, good afternoon and good evening, everybody. This is the ALAC monthly conference call on Tuesday the 26^th of April, 2011, and the time is 14:14 UTC. We are a few minutes late and so I’ll quickly move with the adoption of the agenda and whether there is any other business or other amendments. The agenda stands as it is so we’ll start with a roll call.

Gisella Gruber-White: Good morning, good afternoon, Chair and to everyone on the ALAC call on the 26^th of April we have Olivier Crépin-Leblond, Vice Chairman Edmon Chung, Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Alan Greenberg, Ron Sherwood, Sebastien Bachollet, Mohamed El Bashir, Tijani Ben Jemaa, Dev Anand Teelucksingh. I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone off the roll call.

Apologies from Sandra Hoferichter, Sylvia Herlein-Leite, Cintra Sooknanan, Jean-Jacques Subrenat, Carlton Samuels. And present from staff today we have Heidi Ullrich, Seth Greene, Matt Ashtiani, and myself, Gisella Gruber-White.

Can I please remind everyone to state their names when speaking for transcript purposes? Thank you, over to you, Olivier.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Gisella, and just one note. There is an apology for arriving late from Evan Leibovitch as well, and I would be very grateful if you would advise me when he arrives or if anyone else from the ALAC.

Right, next thing is the review of the action items, and there were four action items in the last meeting, which was on the 17^th of March; the first one being Patrick and Lutz to develop statement with Eric Brunner-Williams on the SSAC Review and submit it to the ALAC. And that was completed and thank you very much for Patrick, Lutz, and Eric.

The next one was Alan Greenberg to put together an IP Issue for the GAC scorecard, and that was done as well. Thanks very much, Alan. Much appreciated, and in fact we had a lot of input this month from community members. And the next one was the “translate the guide in the Wiki into other languages,” and that was also completed.

And the last one being to add Danny Younger’s comment to the next ALAC agenda, and I believe that’s on the current agenda so that’s also done. Any comments from… No comments, okay.

So we’ll move then to the next part, and I notice that there are no minutes of the last meeting, and I understand those were- Are these going to be published at some point, Heidi?

Heidi Ullrich: Yes. Apologies, due to the number of transcripts that came out of the San Francisco meeting they are a little bit behind and we have followed up with them and we expect the transcript shortly.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you, Heidi. And so the next part is #4, review of current ALS applications, and I’ll defer to staff on this.

Heidi Ullrich: Okay, let me just go ahead and cover this, unless Seth, you want to?

Seth Greene: Heidi no, please, go ahead.

Heidi Ullrich: Okay, actually I can see there’s one missing. So we have two from EURALO – it’s the European Media Platform and the Ukrainian Internet Association. My understanding is that just yesterday the request was made to the Chair and Secretary of EURALO for regional advice and so those two are coming along. The two from APRALO – we had one NetMission.asia and the other one is the ISOC Calcutta – and those two are still going under due diligence but progress is being made, so we expect the request for regional advice to be made shortly.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Heidi. Any comments from anyone on these applications?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If I may, I haven’t actually managed to get my hand up – it’s Cheryl.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Please, Cheryl.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, Olivier, Cheryl Langdon-Orr for the record. Just wanting to have on the record a small reminder at this point that of course with ISOC chapters that many of us have gone through a form of due diligence before as they have become chapters in ISOC, so for the two already in ISOC chapters and are on the chapters lists, we’ll be familiar with ISOC chapters and perhaps when it comes to voting or indeed giving the regional advice as is influenced by us in some way, shape, or form.

And just to remind the ALAC members that NetMission of course is a group from Asia-Pacific that we are quite familiar with having had presentations by members of this organization at several of our ALAC and regional meetings. So sometimes it gets to be a bit of a blur of names and faces but if you think about those young kids from Hong Kong, they’re the ones we’re talking about. Thank you, Olivier.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Cheryl, good addition. I think we’ll move on then. If there are no other comments from the floor we’ll move to the next part, which is the reports, and I note here that there is a link in our agenda which sends to the At-Large reports from the various working groups, RALOs and liaisons. I thank very much Edmon for having filed his report and I gather all the other reports are filed on that page and we’re not going to-

Wolf Ludwig: My name is Wolf Ludwig.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Are there any questions or comments from anyone with regards to these reports? Now, I must also confess I have not had the time to read the reports from the RALOs and I hope that they are all in. For those regions who have not managed to file their reports could you please do so? It’s an excellent way to keep track of your activities, not only for people not being part of your RALO but also for people who are in your RALO. And Cheryl, you have raised your hand. Cheryl?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh thank you. Just specific to the RALO reports, now we have a far more friendly and useable Wiki system I wondered if we could just put our minds as a future thing to do for some perhaps more automated or standing type link reporting. Most of the RALOs will have had reasonable time before an ALAC meeting in any given month to post a report; the exception of course is the APRALO because it only holds its meeting earlier in the same day as the ALAC meeting is traditionally held.

So whilst it might benefit all RALOs it would certainly benefit the Secretariat of APRALO if we could have some form of our ALAC agenda linking to the most recent formal teleconference meeting having been held by APRALO. Now, in the course of any given meeting for example today, you would only have what we intended to talk on and any brief notes that were attached to it, not full and complete minuting but it would mean that later on when the full and complete minuting from APRALO is logged on that Wiki sight that it is properly linked.

That might be a shortcut that might be worthwhile considering the impacts that could be something that we could look at as we implement some of the recommendations from the ALAC Review processes, the shortcutting, fast-tracking and intelligent remodeling of reporting. That’s it.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl. Sounds good. I have no objection to this happening personally. Does anyone have any comment on this? Okay, I think we can then move to the next part of our agenda and that’s the new business. Now, I do have to check one point of procedure with regards to the items for decision. I gather that since a decision is made one needs to have a quorum on those. Is this correct?

Heidi Ullrich: Yes, so we could move on to the items for discussion perhaps, we may have quorum later on.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If I may, I’m just going to call trumps on you here, dear. There’s two ways out for Olivier, at least that I can see: yes, for a decision at this meeting we do need to have a quorum, and as it’s unlikely that we will even if Evan joins us because of the numbers of apologies that we have and the traditional no-shows that we get, the alternative is to punt any item for decision that is considered urgent – i.e., needs to be completed for the next meeting of the ALAC, and there are none of them that would fall into that category with the possible exception of item #7, and even that I think should be dealt with in a timely manner. You could punt it to the Executive Committee for decision because that is what they are there for.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you, Cheryl. I’m inclined to go along with that. Should we just leave those aside then for the time being?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: You can discuss any. For example the PAD I suggest be just punted. I think it was worthy of a full group discussion on the item #7, and I think we can discuss and then formalize the vote in item #8. But as part of the Executive I would like to take the measurement of the rest of the ALAC in their opinions and then take it to the formalities in the ExCom, and it should garner another 25 minutes of agenda time perhaps.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Perfect, so I think that would require- So let’s punt #6 on to the side. I can see just a few things; we’ll discuss it on the list. And I see #7, the At-Large Working Group on Future Challenges. Unfortunately, Jean-Jacques is not able to be with us today so it would have been a good thing also for Jean-Jacques to take part in this discussion.

But one thing I wanted to bring to the ALAC was the discussion on the charter, the determination of membership and leadership, determining which Work Group this new Working Group would consume because it seems to be quite wide-ranging; and also the fact that if we are creating another Working Group might it divert people’s time from other work on other Working Groups?

So the first thing was a question I think which came from Jean-Jacques, which came to the ALAC, I think it came to me and to Heidi as well which was the question of the membership – who were the members of the Working Group? And one thing which I answered, and I guess this was always the idea, was that this Working Group was open to everyone. It’s not only open to members of the ALAC, it’s not open to only members of the ALAC Executive Committee – it’s open to every At-Large member.

But with regards to the charter there are procedures to follow, and since I have not created a Working Group before and it’s a procedural thing, I wonder whether Heidi could help us out on this one or Cheryl, either, just to remind us.

Heidi Ullrich: I’m happy to defer to Cheryl.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: You’ve got me giggling again. You remember that knowledge base don’t you, boys and girls? Okay, Alan, you’ve got your hand up.

Alan Greenberg: Yeah, I just wanted a clarification. At one point I thought I had read that the membership had been frozen and new people are no longer welcome. Is that correct or incorrect?

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: As far as I’m concerned that is incorrect. I think it was an assumption from someone who wrote in there, and there was much hearsay as our attention was diverted onto other work and answers were not forthcoming that fast. The question was answered as “Oh, I assume it’s now closed and no one else can join.”

There was also a confusion with other Working Groups. We had to furnish a list of people for the DSSA Working Group, for cross-constituency Working Groups where there we had a limited membership.

Alan Greenberg: I understand that. Who does one notify if one’s interested?

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I think you notify the ALAC. You can make it publicly known, and while unfortunately we can’t make decisions here but we have several co-chairs, possible co-chairs. And so you’d have to do that once the Chair’s up. Next is Tijani?

Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, thank you Olivier. I agree with you that the membership has to be open to all At-Large members, but I cannot imagine an efficient Working Group or Task Force working with I don’t know, 20 people. So the number, if the membership is open the number has to be set up. We have to decide on a number, on a maximum number – otherwise there will not be any work.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, if I can pick up on Tijani’s point as I react to the original mandate I was given, which was to bring us up to speed on processes of how one does a Working Group; what we’re talking about here is a standing Working Group, not an ad-hoc Working Group. That’s an important distinction. An ad-hoc Working Group of course is together for a particular purpose – I’m sorry, this is Cheryl speaking for the record – a particular purpose and often requiring a fairly rapid response. And Tijani’s points are very well taken in terms of size of Work Group and the rapidity of the response that one needs or the outcome that one is desiring from a particular Work Group.

Standing Work Groups must operate under a particular charter. In fact all Work Groups should operate under some form of purposeful charter, and that is something that we have not been particularly good at – deciding and defining our charters. They’ve tended to become somewhat flexible and in some cases they have reinvented themselves. But as a result of the opportunity we have from the ALAC Improvements Program going ahead, part of that will require us to revise, resuscitate, remodel, rename or retire a number of our Working Groups it’s something that I think we need to get right as we make a new one.

Now a standing Working Group, what does that mean? It will have a mailing list, and mailing lists to Working Groups have traditionally been open to all comers and can be self-subscribed to. On a Wiki page, which we usually also set up for a Working Group – ad hoc or standing – I would suggest we make sure we have a button there somewhere that allows individuals to self-subscribe to the relevant Work Group list; in this case, the one we’re discussing, and also an opportunity for any sub-teams or activities that that Work Group might be currently engaged.

Not everything a Work Group does will be a committee of the whole action, and Tijani, to step on your point, that is where a large Work Group which may have a membership in excess of 20 or more, will probably be operating effectively other than by list discussion by having itself cut up into smaller active parts with particular tasks.

In terms of the charter I would suggest that we work with the current membership or the membership as of close of the end of this week on divining a first draft of a charter that should, in the way of good ALAC and At-Large activities, be on the Wiki for people to comment on and edit. It needs also to have a specific leadership. Now in past times we have had Work Groups which have allocated what we would call Meeting Leaders or Chairs or Co-Chairs whose administrative job is to drive whatever meetings occur, and in some cases also drive some parts of texting.

That is something that I would suggest this Work Group would benefit by, and the term “Co-Chair” has been listed next to some people’s names already. And we would need at a later point to allocate who belongs to that structure, but what we do have to have on all Work Groups that are formed by the ALAC is an ALAC conduit – a member of the ALAC recognizing that it may be later run by a non-ALAC member; but a member of the ALAC, a current member of the ALAC whose job it is to act as conduit or lower-case L liaison between the activities of the Work Group and the ALAC itself.

Now in the past that has been in some cases also the leader of the group. If we are going to charter this new Work Group I would strongly suggest we charter it along the lines of what (inaudible) to take out of the GNSO Work Group guidelines; and I would suggest that a small working party consisting of an ALAC member or two and the current lineup of membership of this Work Group be tasked with looking at the GNSO Work Group guidelines and seeing what bits of it, and it would be most of it bits, I would think, they would like to adopt for the purposes of this then-nearly-to-be-chartered Work Group.

The only other thing I would suggest is that if you’re making a call for members, it’s fairly important that they recognize any requirements for performance. So for example, if this Work Group is chartered with particular milestone dates or reaction times required it may be appropriate for us to have those in the charter. So it might be a hypothetical but one worthy of consideration, for example, maybe having in the charter that this Work Group will report at each of the face-to-face meetings of the ALAC held at ICANN meetings, which gives clear dates and milestone activity for it to work with.

Other than that, that’s looking at what can be done and what could be one in the chartering, care and feeding of a Work Group.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl, and I was just going to ask you one thing to make it clear - it’s the Working Group itself that will establish its charter? Or it’s for the ALAC to establish the charter of the Working Group?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It’s actually for the ALAC to charter it. Now, we can tell the Work Group to come up with some drafting and then we can decide which I’s we will dot, what T’s we will cross and what red lines we will put through where, and what additional text they might want to put in, but it is actually the chartering organization’s job to charter it.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Right, because (crosstalk) if I could just say the members of the Working Group, or the potential members of the potential Working Group I guess have pretty, have designed already several things that they wish to do and I gather this would probably be their first task, which would be to come up with a draft list of what they would want to do and then we can work that into a charter.

There was one thing I was going to ask from you, Cheryl, since you are up to par, up to speed I should say on all procedural issues: would you mind holding their hand to start them up?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I’m happy to hold their hand and their aspirational works is the sort of thing that one would have as a mission definition for the charter. The charter has to put some particular milestones in place and rules and regulations and so on.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Perfect, great. Thank you. Alan, you have a comment?

Alan Greenberg: Yeah, just a note with regards to the GNSO processes. In our case, the ALAC must approve the charter. Who writes it, if you look at the GNSO history, has varied. Sometimes a drafting group is set up, sometimes the Group is set up and told to draft the charter and send it back for approval or discussion. So it can really be done any of those ways and certainly based on GNSO history there’s no right or wrong and there’s a fair amount of flexibility. Ultimately the ALAC has to approve the charter.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Interesting. Thank you very much, Alan. That’s a good thing and I think that if we want to enable groups to define work and if we want to continue this bottom-up process it would be a good idea to get the group to write at least a first draft and then be helped through the process, of course with the ALAC to ultimately – after having given feedback to the group and amended the charter accordingly, to then agree to it. Tijani?

Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, Alan said almost what I wanted to say. I think it is for the Working Group to establish what they want to be their own mission. So they will propose a charter for the ALAC, then ALAC will approve it; and I think for this particular Working Group and the members, I think they have to propose the charter to the ALAC and then ALAC will adopt it or modify it perhaps.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, Tijani, thank you. I think that’s what we’re going to go for-

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Can I add just one more thing for discussion on this?

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes please, Cheryl.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: On this matter, of the three names – and I think it is important that we do note to date the members of the Working Group are all well known either ALAC members or active regional people from other Working Groups. So I do hear your concern, Olivier, on taking all these key people into new directions, but this is why having it open then to as wide a group of At-Large as possible is an important thing.

But we have Tijani, we have Dave, we have no one from APRALO – APRALO will decide who it will formally put across there or in what ways we’ll interact. There’s a probability of names but it was not discussed at today’s meeting; it will be done at a future one. And it will also incentivize all the ALSes to get people to join once it has a structure and a function ready to go.

We have Sandra, we have Jean-Jacques, we have Sergio, we have Vanda, we have Evan, we have Marc Rotenberg, we have Darlene and we have Danny Younger. So we actually have a heavily weighted ALAC presence in that which means any charter that this group comes up with will by definition have strong ALAC support. Those two that have the word “candidate for Co-Chair” next to their names are Jean-Jacques, Evan, and Marc. At the last meeting in San Francisco Jean-Jacques obviously put forward this process and the potential of the Work Group, and Marc indicated his interest to continue in the formal leadership of that.

I would suggest that what we have there is three names, all of which belong to the ALAC. It would perhaps be smart of us to consider making at least one of those names not so much “candidate for Co-Chair” but rather the formal liaison, in other words, someone whose job it is to report back to the ALAC on the mechanism, methods, progress, etc., of this Work Group; and who, as the Work Group gets into trouble the Work Group goes to to bring any concerns and attention to us as the chartering organization, remembering that this thing will outlive hopefully all of us as ALAC members.

So it might be that you might want to consider, Olivier, having an interim Chair appointed during the earlier stages of chartering and drafting of the charter, and that you approach at least one of those three names to actually act not as a potential Co-Chair but rather as the lower-case L liaison that the Work Group needs.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Right, thank you Cheryl. I was going to suggest that Jean-Jacques was going to be the interim Chair since he was the original proponent of the Working Group and I gather he more than anyone else is particularly interested and taken up by this group. I guess we can’t, I mean I see ticks here and agreement but I’m not quite sure whether we can make decisions or not.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We can propose that. I mean I’m certainly happy to nominate Jean-Jacques in that role. I suspect we will probably have someone second added to that reading, and then we take it to the list for affirmation.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Perfect, well I see a tick from Tijani. Tijani, are you seconding?

Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, sure.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Super, okay. So that’s an action item – take it to the list for affirmation. And I see Mohamed also agreeing, so that’s great. I don’t want to spend that much more time on the subject of the Working Group itself since we’ve now established that the Working Group will define, will at least draft a first draft charter and then take it from there.

It is a standing Working Group that does not need to report to us within three weeks with results, and at the same time I also want this to be a Working Group that is successful so we do need to make sure that the charter is done right, that it doesn’t do too much or attempt to do too much; but at the same time that it’s not restricted so as to be able to do too little.

I suggest one last thing: there will be much discussion in Singapore, the Sunday workshop in Singapore. We’ll spend considerable time looking at the standing and ad-hoc Working Groups. I was going to suggest that we look at our current list of standing At-Large Working Groups and to, I just noticed there is such a long list there, to think which ones of these are still in place and which are moribund or which ones need to be revived.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I’ll bring my surgical shears with me to Singapore.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, looking at the standing At-Large Working Groups that we have at the moment, and there is a page that we have on that. I’m not sure if you have… There is a link from the agenda over to that page, and thank you, Heidi, for putting it in the chat. There’s the At-Large Engagement in ICANN, there’s the At-Large Naming Issues Task Force, there’s the At-Large Registrants Rights and Responsibilities… I mean most of them- I agree with what Heidi just wrote in the chat: most of them to me need to be revived, perhaps not with a machete, Alan…

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh, I don’t know.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Maybe with an axe. Maybe with an axe. You know, we really have to look at these and to either close them or revive them, because at the moment they’re there but they don’t seem to be doing much, and I’m a little concerned that when we’re adding one more Group to those there’ll be even less incentive to join and to be active in any of the current ones. Any comments from the floor? Sebastien, you have your hand up. Sebastien? You might be muted.

Is it *6 or *7?

Tijani Ben Jemaa: *7.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: *7 to unmute.

Sebastien Bachollet: Is it clear now?

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And now we can hear you, Sebastien, yes please.

Sebastien Bachollet: Okay, sorry. Yes, I just wanted to remind you that whatever you want to do, at least change the leadership of the future structure of the Accountability and Transparency of ICANN. My feeling is that it is the same purpose of the just-created Working Group but that’s your business, but at least I would like it be replaced. My guess is that will be at the (inaudible) should be any more Co-Chairs for this Working Group. Thank you.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Sebastien, and I’m a little surprised that you mentioned that Adam was Co-Chair, because looking at the work that was done at the end of last year with Heidi, we attempted to revive a number of groups. And if you look into the work page, the Confluence page on the future structure, accountability and transparency of ALAC, of ICANN, sorry, it doesn’t have Adam listed anymore.

Sebastien Bachollet: We are not listed as members anymore but if you click to the Officer, you will get Sebastien Bachollet, Co-Chair and ALAC (inaudible) and then for Co-Chair Sylvia Herlein-Leitte as Vice-Chair.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: My goodness, this looks like the original structure a few hundred years ago.

Sebastien Bachollet: Sorry, we are old I know but not so much. It was a few months ago. It’s just from November, it’s not anymore accurate. Thank you.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you Sebastien. Well, that’s certainly a point that you made – the Future Structure, Accountability and Transparency of ICANN being very similar to the current group. How does everyone feel about this?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, Olivier, I put my hand up but I also wrote it in the chat – Cheryl speaking for the record. That’s one I believe is consumed by the new one. It’s a hard stop on its activities. It was particularly active prior to the At-Large Summit and of course huge amounts of work were done then. Two things from that – we still need to keep those old membership lists as archives but then if the appropriate links are enabled, and like all of the Work Groups, both pre-Summit and post-, I am as usual not listed on them and of course I served on every single one of the damn things. And I can’t say I’ve gone through all these SocialText pages to change that, so I guess-

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Cheryl, you’re part of the webpage itself. That’s why you don’t need to be listed.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, well fine, but it does show that we do need to, as we are closing it, just allow for a comment or something on the bottom of an archive page in case someone finds themselves that they could put that in as a comment, and staff could unlock it and rectify it against the- So perhaps we should rectify it, pre-flag that one as one that we will be using as an example of how it has been consumed by a new one and if we can make the appropriate changes, and Accountability and Transparency now has a totally new focus in a post-Affirmation of Commitments world which was when we put this together.

And we probably should also link to the Affirmation of Commitments results and commentary by the ALAC on the ATRT as well off that page, because it carries a closely substantial linkage to the work that our original Work Group did and the outcomes that we say in a post-JPA and post-Affirmation of Commitments world. So just a little bit of [twirling] and tidying I think is required.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Cheryl. And I think not only that but one thing that I’m particularly concerned about is if one opens new or starts new Working Groups and closes older Working Groups, the knowledge that might be lost in the process is something that’s of concern to me especially when the new Working Groups or if the new Working Groups do not take into account the knowledge that was acquired in the Working Group that it superseded somehow. So that’s one thing we also have to look at.

I have been reminded by Heidi that we are going to spend some time in Singapore on these. What I was going to suggest is that we all look at the different currently-standing At-Large Working Groups, we look at their archives and we look at their activity as a group, not on this call but in our own time; and perhaps comment on the ALAC discussion lists so as to think well, which ones are ready to be retired and which ones are ready to be revived or need absolutely to be revived? Is this a good idea? Is this not a good idea?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, it’s a good idea but it’ll need to be homework that’s before we arrive in Singapore.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: There definitely needs to be homework done because there are several of them, and reading through each one of them in turn will just take us too much time and we’ll probably have gone through two or three by the time our time is finished in Singapore.

And with this I think we should move on to the next part if there are no other comments. And I see no hands up so I gather we have pretty much gone through that subject.

The next part is part #8, section #8: formal vote of thanks to staff on the Confluence Wiki guide, which is a fantastic, in my view a fantastic guide for the Confluence Wiki. And I hope that all ALAC members will have read through it because I learned a lot of things on that and I can say I can actually use the darn thing. And I read it in French as well and it was the same thing as in English so certainly helpful.

Unfortunately we don’t have a quorum for the vote. I could say that in principal we would thank very much staff for the Confluence guide and we could have a vote that takes place offline perhaps. Any comments on the Confluence guide?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If I may, Olivier, Cheryl here – perhaps you can have the wording of the vote of thanks created by the ExCom and that wording go out as a draft to the list with an “unless anyone objects before we go into a formal vote of thanks and unanimous support” situation.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, Cheryl, I see nothing to go against that. That’s a good idea. And Sebastien, you have your hand up?

Sebastien Bachollet: Yes, just to thank the staff of course but also to tell you that maybe you can spread this word around the community, and maybe send it specifically to the Board. They need to learn how to use such tools. Thank you very much.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Sebastien, is the Board already on Confluence?

Sebastien Bachollet: Don’t ask me that question, I am not going to answer those questions. But I must confess that I must be leaving (sneezes).

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Oh dear, that was not the question to ask obviously. Fine, I guess the Board is too shocked to be able to answer this idea of being on a Confluence and we can take that out of the comments. But anyway, we’ll move on then-

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (inaudible)

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I’ll say that I totally agree with Cheryl’s suggestion and so the ExCom will write a statement, and that will then be presented to the ALAC for a vote.

Next we are reaching items for discussion and the next item is the proposed ALAC statement to the ICANN Board on the RAA negotiations, the Registrar, would you call it Registrar Accreditation Agreement. It’s a short piece of text which we did not get asked any question about, but to give you an idea of the background the GNSO Council, sorry, a GNSO Working Group discussed the RAA negotiations and… Actually, can I punt this over to Alan because I think he probably knows better than I do since he is our GNSO-

Alan Greenberg: I’m not quite sure I know what the question is you’re asking.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, the question I’m asking is the background on the RAA negotiations and the discussions that took place in the Working Group, the recommendations that were made and how the GNSO Council voted.

Alan Greenberg: Okay, I did put a note on the Wiki on following the statement yesterday, I don’t know if anyone’s had a chance to look at it. The history is basically the RAA Working Group came up with a proposal with two different alternatives on how to proceed, because one of the questions it was asked was “How do we proceed?”

One of them that was recommended by all the non-registrars in the Group was to go forward with the concept of observers in the negotiations, which could be excluded under certain conditions and various things. That was categorically refused by the registrars and they proposed another method which essentially said it’s an ICANN/registrar negotiation, and “ICANN” they read as ICANN staff. But the rest of the procedure was basically similar.

There was a proposal in the GNSO Council to say the GNSO adopts the procedure A, and that of course did not succeed and it wasn’t expected to succeed. The registries went along with the registrars because the process implies that the GNSO has the ability to and needs to ratify contractual issues, which is not within its formal mandate.

The confusing thing is that in the last iteration the GNSO, there were unilateral negotiations between ICANN staff and registrars, and the GNSO was then told “You have to approve this with the two-thirds majority if it’s to be enacted.” The GNSO rightfully viewed that as being asked to rubber stamp something which they hadn’t participated in and to a large extent refused. Ultimately it was adopted by the GNSO with the understanding that this new procedure would be discussed, so that’s how we got where we are right now.

The registrars are basically objected to the second version, the one which was built upon their recommendation, because it added a number of restrictions to it. Moreover the registrars have now somewhat changed their position in that they are now saying they accepted the GNSO being part of the approval process before for expediency because they really wanted that last set of RAA changes. If you remember it was in response to the [register fly] problems and there were things that even they felt had to be changed.

The situation is different now. The registrars from my perspective anyway, they may not agree, are moderately happy with the current RAA and it’s ICANN and the user groups that want to see changes. So the registrars don’t feel they’re under any compulsion to give a lot in how this one gets adopted. And that’s basically where we sit.

I think there is an in between path and I have in fact started private discussions on it in that the RAA makes, excuse me, the RAA makes reference to the GNSO approval only with respect to things that are subject to consensus policy, not the contractual terms parts. And I think it would be quite reasonable that the GNSO has to approve parts of the new RAA that are subject to consensus policy but not necessarily the other parts. That doesn’t address the observer issue, and the observer issue in one form or another is really the substance of our statement. The parts about the GNSO having to approve the process is somewhat a red herring from our perspective. Does that explain it, Olivier?

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, Alan, thank you very much and I’m glad you touched on the crux of the proposed letter which is that particularly the RAA process as it is, the negotiation process as it is not having any observer from the community is quite opaque, well not transparent let’s say.

Alan Greenberg: I guess I have one more comment. It is quite, the registrars are quite correct in that this is a negotiation between ICANN and registrars. I have suggested essentially going farther than observers, that ICANN could name to its negotiating committee as it were, as its representative, members of ALAC, At-Large, GAC, the GNSO Non-Contracted Parties Group; that is ICANN. These people would be subject to non disclosure agreements, they couldn’t necessarily report back to their own groups but there could be a diverse group as part of the negotiating team.

The registrars have informally said that if that was done they simply would not participate, they would stonewall. The real problem in this whole thing is ICANN is being completely silent from our point of view, ICANN Legal and the ICANN registrar contact, as to what they believe should be done. And I think our letter to the Board is quite appropriate. It’s time that ICANN put a stake in the ground and the Board put a stake in the ground and said who is ICANN from this perspective.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you for this summary, Alan, and I might also add that there are other comments currently on the Wiki, one from Eric Brunner-Williams who wishes to enlarge the number of issues that ALAC could address in that statement; and another one from Kieren McCarthy who believes that the ALAC has picked sides and is basically going into the SO dispute within the GNSO, getting involved with this and would like to see ALAC being more neutral.

The floor is open for discussion and I see Cheryl with her hand up. Cheryl?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, Olivier. Cheryl Langdon-Orr for the record, sorry. I’m not sorry I’m Cheryl Langdon-Orr, I’m sorry I cleared my throat. Well, at this time of night… I must remind you it’s now 1:00 AM in my part of the world and later in other parts of Asia so you’ve got to have some humor.

I don’t think the text is ready to go as it is. I know that we are only under discussion now but I would like to have an action item on all of the ALAC numbers to get themselves to that Wiki space and to get some excellent bits out of all the comments that they’ve put so far, and start putting in some proposed issues and text and changes. I for one would like to see us be less open to criticism by an already reactive if not hyper reactive GNSO Council and seek very much to the greater good for the internet end users and the greater issues which affect us all, across types and party lines, and still make the very important points made.

I don’t want this to be text that can be read as simple a few disgruntled people who were unable to get consensus in a Work Group activity in the GNSO who have gone and bleated at their Advisory Committee and got them to write the words that they wanted to in discussions earlier. I think we need to build on this text; I think we need to probably cut many of those early paragraphs out and replace them with the same intents but different verbiage. And if we can do that between now and mid-month I think it’s still timely enough.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Cheryl, and I was going to actually ask whether we were going to be able to have this ready by this Thursday because this Thursday is the next GNSO Council meeting. I gather and I believe myself this is probably impossible.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, it’s our letter to the Board, it’s not our letter to the bleeding GNSO Council. We’ve got a liaison who can bring them up to date on what we’re doing.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. Alan, your hand is up.

Alan Greenberg: Yes, a couple of things. Number one , I agree with Cheryl that we need to expunge, take out from this the analysis of the GNSO inability to do things. The wording that we have now is not actually accurate in some cases and I don’t think we need to raise red flags.

I disagree with Kieren. I think we are taking sides and I think it’s important that we take sides. We’re taking the side of we believe that ICANN is more than just ICANN staff and that’s a very important issue. I’ve been on the ALAC now, on the ALAC or involved with the ALAC for four and a half years pretty much. Some of you are aware of the fact that I’ve been very, very frustrated at time with some of the – how do I put this gently – garbage that we have forwarded to the Board under the name of our “advice to the Board,” things which were completely irrelevant to the Board and polluted any of the good things we had to say.

I class this particular document as one of the very few things that have been sent to the Board or have been needed to be sent to the Board that are truly advice to the Board. I think this is an important one.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That’s why we’ve got to get it right, Alan.

Alan Greenberg: We do have to get it right, and one of the reasons I’ve been an advocate of not sending things to the Board which are not truly advice to the Board that we want them to heed and take action on, is cause when something does arrive from us I think it needs to be recognized as being important and something to be focused on. But I think this is one of those, thank you.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Alan, and I was just going to comment on this point. I think that some of the… Certainly yes, this advice, this specific statement is going to be very important to be sent to the Board. Other statements before, I think I have asked Heidi to send as a “for your information” type thing, and maybe there is some kind of protocol that we can develop with the Board and with the Board support staff to make sure that we can send them things of a lesser priority that would be things for their information, for any interested Board members; whilst at the same time if we have important statements such as that one we can send as a high priority item which would then be sent to all Board members.

Alan Greenberg: We could discuss that at length but you know my position (crosstalk) others.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I know. Well, I’m trying to expand communication between the Board and us and expand communication between us and others as well, and certainly keeping those communication channels open cannot be a bad thing. Evan?

Evan Leibovitch: Hi there. In some cases this isn’t even a matter of keeping them open; it’s a matter of opening up for the first time. We were sort of surprised to find out that weeks after we had responded to an urgent request from the GAC to supply them with a comment on their scorecard, many weeks after we submitted it in a panic that they themselves created, we find that they haven’t seen it or at least many members of the GAC haven’t even seen the statement. So this isn’t even a matter of keeping channels open; it’s a matter of figuring them out in the first place.

Anyway, having said that, I also wanted to put in my two cents in support of Alan and disagreeing with Kieren in terms of whether this is a matter of taking sides or whatever. We don’t exist here to be a peacemaker or a referee or to placate other communities. We are here to represent and advocate the voice of the end user. Sometimes that coincides with different communities, sometimes it coincides with governments, sometimes it coincides with business interests, sometimes it coincides with NGOs, but our side is our own and I don’t think we have any apologies to make for that.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Evan, and I think there appears to be a lot of agreement around here. I haven’t seen anybody putting tick marks but certainly you have echoed the view of several other people who have spoken before. So yes, and I see a tick mark from Tijani in agreement and you certainly have my agreement on that as well.

Now I was going to suggest that first thing, we’re not going to have a deadline that gets us to amendments and to write this statement in 24 hours. I thought we would give ourselves time on this. It’s certainly not something that will be presentable to the Board or to the GNSO this week. What we do have to do is to make sure it is presented in time for probably the next meeting of the Board or the next… I think the Board is going in May on a retreat – we need to have this released and sent to the Board at the correct time.

Does anyone have an idea? Should we work backwards from those timings? Evan, your hand is up.

Evan Leibovitch: Oh sorry, I just didn’t put it down.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. So Alan, you’re next.

Alan Greenberg: As something I could check but haven’t, is there an agenda published for the retreat yet in terms of the subject matter?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Not that I’ve seen.

Alan Greenberg: Sebastien, is it something you could share with us? No agenda yet. In the absence of an agenda and given the fact that Avri’s blog did make this quite visible it would be useful if we had it published prior to the retreat. It should be short enough that it doesn’t need to be out there very long before the retreat but it should be useful, but that gives us several weeks.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, I agree with you, Alan, and of course this is still a draft so obviously there is some work to do. Could I ask for a volunteer to hold the pen, to incorporate those amendments into the best statement itself?

Alan Greenberg: To the extent that my opinion can be part of the process I’m willing to draft it but I do have a strong opinion, so I may not be the best one to do it.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I think you might not have the strongest opinions among us, just a hunch that I have.

Alan Greenberg: Indeed, but the person who writes gets to put their opinions in. Okay, Evan is a good counterbalance for me. Together I guess we can probably do it. We enjoy fighting with each other.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, right, well I see Evan is typing he’ll help with that. Okay, super. Well thanks, I think that’s a deal then.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think you should make it an essential outcome for all of the ALAC members to get themselves to the Wiki, read it, and interact while they are doing this drafting because it’s very unfair to have people drafting things, even if we do work back from May 20-21, and then when things actually go as a final draft for vote people start commenting. That’s extremely frustrating and (crosstalk).

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, can I ask an action item to be that staff asks for this page, on the Announce list for this page to be looked at and commented on? I think it’s already been done once, hasn’t it? But it doesn’t appear to have brought so many people into the process and I do urge, this is a particularly important point. It really has implications with regards to the transparency of ICANN which go way further than just the GNSO Council.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Perhaps if we wait until Evan and Alan have had a little bit- I mean everyone whose on this call should start doing something, but if before it goes to an Announce if Evan and Alan let us know when they’ve got a little bit of text change done that gives a good reason for people to go and have a look and re-react or react for the first time to the text. But in the Announce, could staff suggest that the ALAC members should subscribe to or watch the page so that they’re made aware when comments go on it?

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Good idea. I have no objection to this. I see that Heidi is trying to find out when the cutoff time is for the Board documents for the retreat, and I gather that we’ll- So we’ll work from there. If we can have by the end of the week, let’s say by next Sunday have Alan and Evan to look at this and amend the text accordingly; and then next Monday we can send out a call?

Evan Leibovitch: We can try.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Alan, your hand is up.

Alan Greenberg: No, no, my hand was up from before.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I don’t know what’s going on on my screen. I can see Sebastien put his hand up for a second and then it disappeared again. Sebastien, did you want to say something?

Sebastien Bachollet: I wanted just to say that I guess for the retreat the deadlines are more flexible than for a formal Board because we are not supposed to have a formal Board and formal decision during the retreat, but as you know it’s likely to happen that the Board takes this retreat and… But what is important is to publish it before because if it’s not before the retreat the next Board meeting will be in Singapore and there is no in between the retreat and Singapore meeting.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Do you have any-

Sebastien Bachollet: No, we don’t have any calls between. It’s just

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Between now and the retreat do you have any call?

Sebastien Bachollet: No, the call was three days ago. The Board meeting was the 21^st if I remember well, and as you know I was offline during the last two weeks and I was not participating on this call.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So if you have nothing to do at the retreat maybe we can suggest that this would be a good discussion.

Sebastien Bachollet: Yeah, I am sure that we will have nothing to do and nothing to prepare for Singapore. It’s just a done deal, the New gTLD Process, but just give us some work, it will be okay. No worries.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, right. Alan, your hand is up again?

Alan Greenberg: Yeah, I would just suggest, and this is not due to any inside knowledge, that if anything comes out of a Board discussion it wouldn’t be in the form of a formal resolution but gentle advice to ICANN staff and to the President. We’re talking about how does ICANN manage its internal affairs here, not a formal decision of the Board, so whether there’s a formal Board meeting or not is perhaps not relevant. It’s whether the Board chooses to discuss this type of issue or not and that hopefully we can influence by making it clear that it’s important.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, I think we have a plan and I suggest that we now move on to the next item for discussion since we have spent much time on this important item; the next one being the Board Resolution on Consumer Choice, Competition and Innovation. And this is the discussion about the specification of cross-regional links and the context provided by Sebastien on this specific- Sebastien, it was an approval of the 2011-2014 strategic plan that dealt with this subject. Do you have anything to mention about this because I must say I’m not 100% on that.

Sebastien Bachollet: I don’t know in specific because I guess it was one part of the discussion of the Board last week and I have to go back to see what is written on it because as I already told you I was not there, and I will come back to you if I have some additional information to give to you. Sorry about that.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Any comment or can anyone fill us in on this specifically? I see no one putting their hand up so we’ll probably have to put this to the side and have a better look at it. Sebastien, can you come back to us please in the next few days on this specifically? I know it’s an ongoing thing, the Consumer Choice, Competition and Innovation, but it’s something where we do need more information in order to proceed forward. I certainly do; if anyone else has more info I’d be grateful that they share it with us. Cheryl?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Cheryl Langdon-Orr for the record, thank you Olivier. Just on this I was at another Board meeting with Rosemary from the Non-Contracted Party house, the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group interest of the GNSO, and she did assure me that she has been in conversation on this topic with Bruce Tonkin who we know was a particular instigator on the Board of this matter. It might be appropriate, Olivier, to reach out to Rosemary from your Chair’s position and to staff that we have a little bit of catch up on the current state of play from that (inaudible) as well.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you Cheryl. I must say I do get mixed signals on this – being told to reach out to Rosemary on one side and then I’m hearing Rosemary is not going to be in the loop and then she is, and I’m a little confused about this altogether and the process. I would have imagined that she was going to take the lead on this.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I would suggest that when she says we need to do something about this, all of that speaking to Bruce is passing to me that there’s something to be shared. So I’m suggesting you’ll probably want to-

Alan Greenberg: This is Alan and I’ll have something to say on this.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. Well, Sebastien, do you mind letting Alan speak first?

Sebastien Bachollet: No problem.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, Alan, you’re on.

Alan Greenberg: I just wanted to note there’s a GNSO meeting on the 7^th of May and there is an agenda item on this subject, and the gist of the agenda item is Rosemary has the lead on this for the GNSO and she will be giving an update. So presumably we can get the contents of that update also, perhaps prior to the meeting but certainly at the meeting or after the meeting. But she is officially the lead from the GNSO on this.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Alan, I’m not subscribed to the GNSO Council list but I gather you are. May I ask that you forward any information that pertains to this once this has taken place, once the meeting has taken place that you forward that to the ALAC list so that we’re all informed?

Alan Greenberg: It’s all public information on their website but yes, I can do that.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: But I’m talking about what Rosemary will basically say on the 7^th of May.

Alan Greenberg: And the minutes when published will be on the website and they’re typically published very quickly, but I’m only getting the fact, verifying that she is the lead and she will be talking about it from the agenda which is public information right now. But yes, I will do that.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Alan. Sebastien?

Sebastien Bachollet: (inaudible) Yes, just to remind myself that we, I had a discussion with someone on (inaudible) and I think what could be important is to have some work done first by staff to give us some context. In fact, one of the reasons I would like very much that we gain what was done as far as the introduction of first round new gTLDs; we had a long list of items and I guess it’s something we need to take into account, not to lose the knowledge at that time. And I had a discussion with Bruce on how to take that into account and how to give this back to the community, but I will leave the discussion to (coughing) and I will try to get it back now.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you Sebastien.

Sebastien Bachollet: And I will come back to you at soon as that is in.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Alright, that will be appreciated. I think we can move to the next point in our agenda, and that’s the identification of data to be shared with registrars and I’ll give you a little bit of background on this. I have recently received an email from the Registrar Constituency and I have been asked just as a follow-up email basically from the meeting we had in San Francisco. And so we have a to-do list effectively.

They are focusing specifically on the educational products for end users and consumers and also they are asking us for more education, more outreach ideas. And I gather that we need to get a little group on our side to work on that. On the registrars side – and I’m just quickly looking over the email – there is Hammock Statton and [Nicola Maylen], so there are two working on this and we do need a couple of people here as well.

So I’m looking for volunteers who would be interested in following up. And Sebastien, you cannot be a volunteer, you have your hand up.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think he’s about to take it down very quickly.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: He certainly did. I’m going to have to use a different word than “volunteer” at some point. Certainly seeing… I hate to ask Evan since he is already involved in so many things, but Evan, you have been involved with the matters of Consumer Choice…

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well I’m certainly happy to put my hand up.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so-

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It is (inaudible), not waning.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yeah. If I can ask you, because the comments which were made during the meeting – and at the moment I’m totally lost between my windows. But the comments that were made at the meeting were made from a handful of individuals on the ALAC side, and certainly you have been… I think you were one of them, Cheryl.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (inaudible), yes.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I just want to give some answers, basically, to Michele and Hammock so as to get things moving. I mean what they have in their listing was the desire on ALAC’s part to have registrar channel to help educate end users on best utilization of a domain name. There was discussion on whether registrars can and should provide information that ALAC should aggregate for general use and for a discussion in their outreach and educational efforts; and there was a talk of ALAC forming a group on developing more trust in the domain name system via education.

And so they committed to providing three or four ideas from either their own consumer education efforts or as their contribution to our efforts, but prior to this they wished to establish discussion with us. So Cheryl, I guess you can start on that. I can remain on this discussion for the time being. Perhaps we should discuss this in the ExCom afterwards and see who else might be interested in being in this. I mean I see also with regards to education, Sandra Hoferichter has been involved with pushing for educational material also.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The reason we’d also have a very strong interest in this, I think this probably needs to have some supporting mechanisms put together – Cheryl for the record, by the way – some supporting mechanisms put together on the ALAC side of things. And then perhaps following up through one or two conduits, let’s talk about it on the ExCom.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: If that’s the case then perhaps we could – and this is just a suggestion for the ExCom discussion afterwards – but an idea that this could be sent over to the list and we’d have a few volunteers come forward, and not even volunteers but just people chime in with their view of how educational messages should be.

Okay, well I think we’ll move on to the next item then, and that’s Danny Younger’s comment regarding the cybersquatting registrar. And Cheryl, you have the floor on this subject.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. Without having any motivation or background beyond the comment that you have in front of you I’m happy as I said at the San Francisco meeting when Danny put his comment into the Adobe Connect room as something for us to act upon then, is that we should discuss it at our next ALAC meeting. We may have time enough to do so now.

I think in the community, there’s members in our community who looked very closely at some slides and compliance issues particularly with a couple of registrars who had a history that some of us would best describe as less than satisfactory in the past; and certainly this one that Danny has raised a number of times on certainly the NARALO lists before. I think we need to discuss how we as an ALAC want to do deal with this very realistic issue that certainly one of our members has brought forward to us.

It isn’t perhaps from my perspective worthy of a shoot from the hip and/or kneejerk reaction from the ALAC. I think, let me read it to the record. Danny’s comment was: “For what it’s worth I would like to see the ALAC release a statement that says ‘We have taken note of yet another lawsuit naming an ICANN-accredited registrar as a serious cyber squatter.” He’s proposed text along the following lines: ‘We call upon the ICANN Compliance Department to act to eliminate the rogue registrars within our midst,’ and he gave a link from DomainWire.com on the details.

We have in fact, Olivier, just to bring you up to speed, discussed these types of issues before as an At-Large Advisory Committee and certainly under my watch as Chair, those discussions resulted in a reaction that went along the following lines: we are not going to sit, shotgun raised, looking at matters of compliance. It is not actually our role to do that. We are and we have been encouraged in particular by the improvements that we were seeing out of Compliance Department activities and particularly heartened after these discussions and some interactions we had via staff with Peter who was in the Compliance Department when we had these discussions in the past, and with changes in metrics that showed quite clearly that the ICANN Compliance Department was indeed acting in a far more decisive and definitive manner. And I think we’re all very aware of the number of registrars that have been cut off for various causes and offenses.

I think perhaps what is needed is a discussion that I would like us to now perhaps take up in our Singapore meeting on exactly how our At-Large community – notice I’m saying our “At-Large community,” not “the ALAC” – can perhaps specifically be disseminating the metrics information and indeed a two-way communication between end users and ICANN’s Compliance Department, which as we’ve seen in the San Francisco meeting has only recently been subject to additional change. We see staff coming on and we trust as our budgets have called for in the past more ability, more appropriate resourcing to be able to do the job it needs to do.

So I would like to note for the record Danny’s concern which is obviously one voice but one voice that carries a concern I think felt by many in the community to our final (inaudible) and should watch this space very closely, but I do think we haven’t shifted very far from our previous discussion outcomes which were “Changes are happening, we’re pleased with the changes that are happening, we would certainly like resources to be improved to allow better and far just and more effective changes to be happening,” but (interference)… and conceivably for a communication exercise but it’s one that is probably best facilitated by the ALAC to operate between the ALSes themselves and the Compliance Department.

And after all, every ALS does in fact sign up to do this role anyway. That’s it for me and I think I took my five minutes.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: You certainly did, and you should have selected four minutes so as to leave time for questions, as anyone knows. But Alan has got a question – we’ll run over time.

Alan Greenberg: Not a question, it’s a statement. I kindly call attention to what I just put in the chat, and if we should consider doing something similar either prior to Singapore and certainly no later than Singapore. Thank you.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Alan, and for the record what you have written in the chat is from the May 7^th GNSO agenda. It says “The Council invites Maguy Serad, ICANN Senior Compliance Director, to provide both an overview of her Compliance philosophy and her 30-, 60- and 90-day plans for the department.” And you’re suggesting that we should do the same as you mentioned. I concur that would be a good idea.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If I could (inaudible) up on that, I would think that we’ve traditionally in the last few face-to-face meeting had excellent interactions and briefings, albeit somewhat spirited at times with members of ICANN Compliance. And it might be appropriate to speak to people to get the new Compliance Director in the hot seat at the Singapore meeting.

Alan Greenberg: But just to make that more effective it may be useful if we could have some level of briefing either at our next ALAC meeting or prior to it, or sometime in May in any case.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So you mean a briefing before the actual conference call. Okay, that sounds like an excellent idea and Heidi, if I could ask for this to be an action item, please. And should that be a single-issue call? I think it should be a call on Compliance.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Which is a single topic, yeah.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I see, yeah, definitely – I don’t think we should have it as an ALAC discussion because it’s just going to take much longer than the five minutes that we usually allocate to these matters and end up being 50 minutes.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: You want us to move to the next one?

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Heidi, and the next one, yes please, Cheryl – cross-community working groups, CWG’s. Cheryl.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, okay. A number of these Working Groups are either no change since our last discussion – Geographic Regions Review Working Group is one of those. The Joint DNS Security and Stability Working Group is another of those, the Study Group on Names of Countries & Territories is again one of those. And I’ve just checked on Technology Evolution of WHOIS Services in preparation for this meeting and it too hasn’t done anything since its last report.

We don’t have membership on all of these but we do on most of them. The Technology Evolution of WHOIS Services, I’m lost to see where we have any interaction at all other than via perhaps our WHOIS Working Group or our Technical Working Group, so perhaps an action item out of this very brief briefing – I’m going to gain you back five minutes here, Olivier – is to look at what is our formal reaction and interaction with the Technology Evolution of WHOIS Services Working Group, because it certainly wasn’t something I could quite easily off the Wiki space devoted to it.

We do need to appoint, I believe it’s an observer, not a representative – correct me if I’m wrong. The other day I thought the letter from the ccNSO for the Frameworks Interpretation Working Group was to ask for observers as opposed to-

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: It is an observer, yes.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, thank you. And that’s something that I think we should discuss tonight and task the ExCom with formalizing if that needs be. So I’ll put that aside for one moment because I do want to speak to the JAS Work Group. I know a number of you on this call are on the JAS Work Group. I am as a member of the JAS Work Group but one that I think has fairly consistently tried to remember that I’m wearing a chartering organization hat as well as an interested party hat… I am absolutely concerned about the ability of this Work Group to produce what we need and when we need it.

I’d like to open that for discussion if you would indulge us, Olivier, for just a couple of minutes. I don’t think we’re going to have a radical resolution out of this meeting but I do think the ALAC needs to know that it’s not that the Work Group isn’t working – it is. It’s just not working fast enough and hard enough in getting the specific outcomes that we need in a timely manner.

And I think that the ALAC as the chartering organization should probably ask the Chair and the Executive to write through the Co-Chairs of the JAS Work Group with absolutely specific, date-driven guidelines on when we want what answers; and if needs be, in what minimal form will do because there are parts of the New gTLD Process and certainly parts of the discussion between the GAC scorecard and the Board deliberations which say that waiting for JAS recommendations, well, at the moment, JAS couldn’t recommend the difference between tea and coffee and who wants to drink what. And I think that it’s at a critical time and we need to go and wrap some knuckles. And Alan’s agreeing with me.

Alan Greenberg: Is there a way to put up two checkmarks?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: \Are you back now, Olivier? Are you back online?

Alan Greenberg: Cheryl, is there a way to put up two checkmarks?

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Oh dear, I don’t know if you can hear me but my line is all garbled so I can’t hear anything.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We can hear you now. Yes, go ahead.

Alan Greenberg: We can hear you.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I’m going to have to- Can you hear me?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes we can.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Oh! And I can hear you again. Okay, I couldn’t hear anything. I don’t know what you’ve said in the past two minutes, I’m afraid. I think it-

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: They’re in deep doo-doo and we desperately need to give them some written, specific instructions including dates, milestones, and minimal requirements we need out of them – the JAS Work Group.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, yeah. Well I’m afraid I didn’t hear any of what you had said before but I gather it was correct and I’ll listen to it on the recording to find out. Any comments?

I totally agree with you with regards to the JAS, on giving them direction and getting them to produce-

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, let’s punt that across to the ExCom then because I did suggest that as Chair you’re going to need to write to the Co-Chairs and go “This is the riot act, it is being read, this is what we need and when.”

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, fine, we’ll punt that to the EC, thank you. With regards to the ccNSO Frameworks Interpretation Working Group, we need to appoint one representative. I’m looking for volunteers. And I gather we have a ccNSO liaison and I wondered whether our ccNSO liaison might be interested in the position?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I’m happy to serve with any of the ccNSO. I mean this is, an observer is not particularly onerous. But yeah, I’m happy to add that. The specific questions of course which you asked on all of them I did try and react to in terms of where we have observers and where we don’t, and the ones where we don’t have observers on is the Technology Evolution of WHOIS Services; and the others I think are all correctly listed as who’s on them.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Correct, yes.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Our formal liaison, however, for the JAS Work Group, I think we need to look at because it was Carlos and I cannot for the life of me remember did we switch it to a new formal liaison.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, I can just give one quick update on the DSSA, the DNS Security and Stability Working Group. There is a meeting between the Co-Chairs later on this week where we will get the ball rolling and there will soon be calls taking place with all of the members of the Working Group. We have been told that all of the people’s names that we have put forward, all of the participants from At-Large have been agreed so we are quite a large group in there and I hope that we will really take advantage of this and contribute well to the Working Group.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I have a question, Olivier, if I may just on that DSSA one.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: When we wrote the charter the Co-Chairs were the Chairs of the chartering organization. Is that still the case or has that shifted? So am I expecting you and Lesley and Stefan or-

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: No, it’s not the case. On our side-

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That’s what I heard, that’s why I’m asking.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: On the At-Large side it was done but now the people are Mikey O’Connor, Jörg Schweiger, and Mark Kosters as well.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: As well?

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So none of them are the Chairs of the different organizations.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I think there will be a page that will soon be put up with the details of all the members and the Chairs, but the first meeting is just going to coordinate. And there’s been a bit of a…I wouldn’t say problem but small malaise from some people because they were away for awhile, but now everyone is back so the ball is going to start rolling on this.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: More information soon on that. I think we can move on to the next item… Oh sorry, the Technology Evolution of WHOIS Services, did you say- Oh, I’m just trying to open that page. I think that required an observer, wasn’t it?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I’ve got the page open and I see no request for an observer or even a listing of membership.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, we’ll follow up on that.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I mean I see the meeting-

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: (crosstalk) through email.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, it’s already well underway.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, and this is why it’s a little bit strange that we suddenly have a question about this. I’ll have to read through and then follow-up on that. Since time is passing by and we’re well beyond our scheduled end time we’ll move to the last two items – the call for community volunteers for the IDN Variant TLDs Case Study Team…

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Is this something our IDN liaison would be-

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, this is what I was going to ask and I hope that our IDN liaison is still around. Where are you Edmon? There you are, Edmon please. You probably are more aware of this than we all are and I was hoping you could enlighten us please.

Edmon Chung: Sure, well this is what is called the IDN VIP at this point, the IDN Variants Issues Project. I have already sort of volunteered myself to the Study Team. I can probably also volunteer myself in my capacity as the ALAC IDN liaison as well; you know, probably (inaudible) you as well.

But I think more importantly it’s really an open call for volunteers right now and I guess in specific earlier today on the APRALO call I asked, I sort of brought it up and asked for volunteers. I think others from ALAC and the ALSes, it would be nice, it would be good for us to participate as well especially those who have expertise in the variants and languages that the specific study groups will be looking at.

So other than that I will definitely continue to follow up on the developments and continue to provide updates. I believe the teams are now being, well, the call just went out so the teams are now being formed and according to the proposed plan it will start working sometime in May.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: That’s correct, yes, and I’ve seen the closing time for volunteers is the 19^th of May. The question I have for you is that the current advancement of requirements, because I see here “Case Study Team Composition” has several experts in there, and people who are knowledgeable in protocol-level detail of DNS and IDNA but also experts on registry and registrar operations, on security and stability, on local customs… And not only that but I noticed it deals not only with CJK scripts but also with Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic characters. How many people should we send or should we propose?

Edmon Chung: Well, that’s a pretty loaded questions but in terms of I guess how many people we should send, you know, I think probably a call for those who are familiar with the five language groups that are identified for the studies would be most useful: as you mentioned the Cyrillic part, the Arabic part, the Chinese part, the Latin and then Greek. So I think that yeah, through that, but also I think perhaps myself, I’d be more than happy to sort of oversee all of which I’d be more, in terms of actual contribution, probably with the Chinese one. But I think in terms of how many people we send, we should probably try to identify them based on the language groups.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Edmon, and Cheryl?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Hi, I want to… I won’t say disagree with Edmon, but I certainly want to temper what he said with the discussion that I was privy to when the IP existing members’ leadership met with the existing IDN Work Group – the IDN ccTLD TDT Work Group which the likes of which led to this activity, and I served on the last of those aforementioned Work Groups.

It’s not just a matter of using and operating in those particular languages – what the Work Team wants, needs and desires is a very effective, very defined, very highly-qualified skill set. And if we were just to pop someone in because they think they know something about Greek script and maybe culture, I would question the value of their contribution.

And I don’t think we necessarily need to send a bunch of names matching one to each of these; I think the fact that we have our IDN liaison in there is hugely important, and I think that the IDN liaison should be supported by whatever ALS interactions are appropriate for any of these particular case studies. That may or may not be from individuals who are in ALSes in those language regions, but this is a highly technical, highly skill set-required group and one that we’d be delighted to be at the table but I don’t think we need to try and crowd it around some sheer weight in numbers. It should be the right people, not just a number of them.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So competence rather than quantity.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh, hell yeah.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I see an agreement from Edmon on that. Tijani? You might be muted.

Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, can you hear me?

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, we can hear you, Tijani.

Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay. I was muted, thank you Olivier. I think that it is a very old call and I think it was initiated by (inaudible) from IANA, and I think we discussed it and I had a limited exchange with [Nayla] and I went on here to be inside this team. But I don’t know why there was a long silence and now we need it again. Is there anything new? I don’t see any email or anything that says that. Thank you.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Tijani. The request was made through an email over to me and I wanted to discuss it here before we send it out to the wider list. Sebastien?

Sebastien Bachollet: Yes, to understand, yes, first the call for volunteers is the 20^th of April so it’s just a new one, and I guess one of the reasons is that the team in charge within the staff of ICANN to take care of that was formed during the last ICANN meeting in San Francisco. And as you maybe know, I guess the leader is the ex-Vice-Chair of the Board who was involved to take that part of the work and he just joined the ICANN staff part time, what it’s called. And I guess that’s why the call was restarted, it was sent on the 20^th of April.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Sebastien, and it sounds like they revived this.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No, it is actually a newly-purposed group.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Is it brand new? Okay.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, it’s newly-purposed. As Sebastien said it has brand new leadership, it has already a number of specific experts it has called upon and it is focusing on measurable, on case studies because the rest of what we’ve done on it – well, not the rest of it…an awful lot of what else has been done in the world of IDN Variants and TLD issues has been a talk fest. We actually need some testing and some real metrics and some real case studies done.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, well thank you Cheryl, and may I suggest then that the call get sent out over to the ALAC and that a selection of the most competent candidates, judging from their experience and knowledge, will then be forwarded over to the organizers of this IDN Variants Group?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Like lambs to the slaughter unless they’re appropriately selected, yeah.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you. And I think that’s the, we’re now reaching- Sorry I just heard…any comments? Oh Alan, sorry, your hand was up. I didn’t see it.

Alan Greenberg: Yeah, it just went up this moment. The issue is not only expertise but willing to work.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Both expertise and willing to work, yes.

Alan Greenberg: Sorry, the latter is necessary. There’s plenty of examples of people who could do things but don’t. Thank you.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: This is not going to be a Work Group that is going to carry any dead wood, and if we send dead wood we’re going to look really stupid.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So I gather the ALAC will be ruthless in its selection.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I would hope so.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And judging, and I want this to be on record, and judging from past, judging from past experience and past track record. Anyway, moving on to item #15 – any other business? And I see no one having-

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Olivier, are we just going to advertise the Security, Stability & Resiliency budget call, that’s all? Just advertise that?

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: We may indeed. I haven’t got the details in front of me. I’ve got 120 screens, so if you have your window open on this… Oh Heidi, please.

Heidi Ullrich: If there’s no any other business I’ll wait until we know that.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well there is no other business so I was hoping that you could-

Heidi Ullrich: Well, we have one minute left so I’ll make it very brief. I just wanted to let you know that this will be my last ALAC call for about four months so I wish you all the very best in Singapore. I will be in touch obviously in the next, through that time, but at any rate to the same extent that I have been. And the second point is that we have the latest, the newest member of the At-Large staff with us this morning and that’s Matt Ashtiani.

Matt Ashtiani: Hello, everybody.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Hola!

Tijani Ben Jemaa: Hi Matt.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Hello Matt.

Heidi Ullrich: We have lots of stuff for Matt and he’ll be up to speed very, very shortly I’m sure.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well Heidi, I wanted to thank you very, very much for all of what you’ve done in well, ever since I started being Chair of ALAC but also everything you’ve done specifically the last few weeks – having to juggle between not only doing 100 things for all of these statements that we’ve sent out, also dealing with all of the staff side and getting everyone up to scratch and up to speed. So a big round of applause from everyone here.

And then of course also a big round of applause to Matt. We’re very happy to see you join and work with us. You have no idea what you’ve put yourself into.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh yes he does!

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: But hey, I’m sure you’ll pick up on it very quickly and I really look forward to working with you, and I think we all look forward to that. And well, Heidi, you know, we’re not going to hear from you for a few weeks. I hope that you’ll soon be back with us and with our new member as well.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Our newest member of NARALO will be welcomed aboard, I’m sure.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Exactly, our newest member of NARALO, and we look forward to seeing that new member and seeing you back. So all the best.

Heidi Ullrich: Thank you.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And I think-

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (crosstalk) okay.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And I think that we can end this call half an hour late, and I’m even using 1600 UTC now which means that our ExCom call will follow; but what I was going to suggest is to take about a five-minute break for everyone and we can start in five minutes on the ExCom call for those people in the Executive Committee. For everyone else, thank you for attending and-

Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And that means that the Community Call on the FY ’12 SSR plan is in 60 minutes’ time.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond: That’s correct, yes. And I encourage everyone to join us then. It is a particularly interesting and important subject, too. So thank you very much, good morning, good afternoon, and good night.

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