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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. 

Wiki MarkupWe 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 12^th 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?

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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. 
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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? 

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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. 

Wiki MarkupThe 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. \\ 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. 

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Annalisa Rogers:                     Yes.
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Fouad Bashwa:                       Okay there is an \[inaudible 00:28:22\] in response to a question that -\\Bashwa:                       Okay there is an [inaudible 00:28:22] in response to a question that -

Annalisa Annalisa Rogers:                     I'm sorry Fouad can you speak either a little louder or closer to your mic?

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Annalisa Rogers:                     We can hear you but you're not - if you could be a little louder that would be helpful.
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Fouad Bashwa:                       \[Inaudible 00:28:44\].  Can you hear me better now?\\Bashwa:                       [Inaudible 00:28:44].  Can you hear me better now?

Annalisa Rogers:                     Much better.

Wiki MarkupFouad Bashwa:                       Okay on the proposal is basically it's an idea and the discussion in \[inaudible Bashwa:                       Okay on the proposal is basically it's an idea and the discussion in [inaudible 00:29:05\].    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 Wiki MarkupBut 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 \level.  This each [inaudible 00:30:22\] ALS will - once it has a certain membership number will be given an \ [inaudible 00:30:31\]. \\unmigrated-wiki-markup 

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 \[inaudible APRALO.  The individuals will be grouped up into an ALAC structure and then that group from a country integrated into an ALS will have a single [inaudible 00:31:22\]. \\ 

So Wiki MarkupSo 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?
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 Wiki MarkupFouad 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 Wiki MarkupSo 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 Wiki MarkupThat 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.

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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?
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Fouad Bashwa:                       \[Inaudible Bashwa:                       [Inaudible 00:36:06\] 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.

[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 Wiki MarkupFouad 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. 

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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.

start with and not one per country. 

Fouad Bashwa:                       Can I ask a question?

Olivier Crepin Leblond:          Yes sure.

Fouad Bashwa:                       [Inaudible Wiki MarkupFouad 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 -

Wiki MarkupFouad Bashwa:                       Yes see \[inaudible Fouad Bashwa:                       Yes see [inaudible 00:39:34\].\\

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.  

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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?
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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 \[inaudible Bashwa:                       Actually the discussion or the suggestion about this particular idea is based on the fact that if we do have that many interested people wanting to join APRALO then an [inaudible 00:43:17\] 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?

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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. 
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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. \\unmigrated-wiki-markup 

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. \\unmigrated-wiki-markup 

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? 

Wiki MarkupMost 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. 

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A lot of people use Mailing List, Skype and Facebook.  Well Twitter was 4^th 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. 

Wiki MarkupAnd 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]. Wiki MarkupYou 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.

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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.
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 Wiki MarkupFouad 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.

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Annalisa Rogers:                     Okay.   Sebastian you’ve got your hand up?
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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.\\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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