At-Large Summit Working Group

Teleconference for 23rd January 2008

Summary Minutes

Present: C Langdon-Orr, D Thompson, S Bachollet, G Shearman, E Leibovitch

Staff: N Ashton-Hart

Apologies: B Brendler, J Hoffman

Minutes taken in the first instance by the ICANN Staff.

The meeting was called to order by the Chair of ALAC at 21:05 UTC.

S Bachollet noted that he had some concern that this meeting was adveretised for all of the Summit WG list to attend and he felt it was just for the SubCommittee doing the planning. The other participants noted that it was fine especially as it engenders more inclusiveness and buy in.

E Leibovitch noted that the upcoming meeting in New Delhi offered good opportunities to finish work that’s outstanding on the agenda and to interact with relevant ICANN decision-makers.

The Chair of ALAC provided a brief summary of the conversations about the Summit that were a part of the ALAC Executive Committee meeting on the 22nd January.

S Bachollet briefly reviewed the conversations about the Summit on the recent EURALO board teleconference, which can be reviewed in full at www.euralo.org. He noted that it was important to ask each region for their specific views on the proposals. He believed that there was an emerging consensus about the content of the meeting based upon the draft programme and the comments in relation to it.

G Shearman noted that he agreed with the assessment of S Bachollet and that we will soon need to find out whether or not ICANN will provide financial support for what is being proposed.

E Leibovitch asked the Staff if it was well-known within the Staff that the Summit was being worked on and the reply was that it was fairly well-known that the community was working on the project.

A discussion was held about the number of days required in order to complete the programme as discussed and the potential cost impacts of changes to the length of the Summit.

A discussion was held on whether or not to take the existing programme and budget forward to ICANN. It was generally felt that the plan and budget should be provided to the staff within the next week or two at the most so that decision-makers at ICANN could discuss this with the community in New Delhi.

S Bachollet asked whether it would be useful to bring the proposal up during the Monday public session to allow other constituencies to comment during the following days of the meeting.

The Chair of ALAC suggested that the proposal at motion on the Summit proposal should be linked to the page for this meeting so that the participants of the meeting could be sure of what was being discussed.

A discussion of the size of the costs was held and how ICANN budgeted for travel costs was conducted as the draft budget was noted by several participants as being very considerable. There were some concerns that this could lead to “sticker shock” on the part of other parties.

A discussion of the dates of travel was conducted with a query as to why the participants in the Summit were arriving in good time to attend the EGENI summit and it was noted by E Leibovitch that part of the objective of the summit was to educate the attendees and not all of the education needed to come from ICANN directly.

A discussion about the possibility of acquiring some funding from other sources, such as ISOC, was conducted and it was generally noted that it was important to try and get support from other parties. It was noted that it was important to indicate that the organisers would be looking for funding from other sources as well as ICANN.

The Chair of ALAC asked if it would be appropriate to involve ISOC in the Summit formally. E Leibovitch noted that he thought this could be important for future summits but for the present one, Paris coming up so soon, it was impractical to involve any third party in the first Summit.

The modalities of preparing the formal proposal for transmission were discussed and it was agreed that the final proposal would be transmitted to the Staff on the 28th February.

The meeting was adjourned at 22:04 UTC.