Wolf Ludwig: Okay, I think we should start with our regular meeting now, I think with a roll call for participants and apologies that we had already. And we then should have a look on the summary minutes from our last call. I guess that all of you or most of you have seen them, and I would like to ask you whether anybody has some more comments, questions; or whether the minutes from our last call can be approved.
Sebastien Bachollet: I am sorry. I am on chat with Olivier. He is waiting for a call from Adigo, which would be good if he can join us prior, before we really start this meeting. I guess in our case it would be really good to have Olivier on the call, yes of course.
Gisella Gruber-White: If you’ll just bear with me for a minute then I’ve just asked Olivier to send us through his number because his mobile wasn’t working for the previous call.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, so we’ll wait a few more minutes until Olivier can make it on the call on a good connection.
Gisella Gruber-White: Please do.
Wolf Ludwig: In the meantime I would like to ask the others to have a close look on the minutes from the last call and on the action items as well so that we can check and approve this as quick as possible.
Gisella Gruber-White: I have a number for Olivier; it will only take a few minutes.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, go ahead.
Sebastien Bachollet: Olivier’s in London in case of-
Gisella Gruber-White: Yes, that’s sorted. We just had problems with his mobile previously.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay.
Heidi Ullrich: Wolf, this is Heidi.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes please.
Heidi Ullrich: If you would like me to start with currently open policy briefings that we’re currently working on I can start that until Olivier arrives.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I’m here!
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, there you are.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, Olivier’s here.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you!
Heidi Ullrich: Thanks.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, thanks a lot Olivier, welcome back.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: We just interrupted the meeting for a couple of minutes and we are now on the agenda point, review of the minutes from the last call and the action items.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Perfect.
Wolf Ludwig: And I was asking the participants if there are any questions, any comments regarding the summary minutes from 15 February 2011. If this is not the case I think we can approve the summary minutes.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yep.
Wolf Ludwig: I’ve heard no objections, then let’s have a quick look at the action items. There was not much. We had two points: Siranush will send her comments on the SWOT analysis to Wolf and Olivier at the end of the week – that’s what she finally did; and all the EURALO members will review the SWOT analysis to identify points of particular importance.
I’m not sure whether there’s some more comments to the draft there made by our members, but I think we can consider the action items as accomplished as well.
And the next point on our agenda among the standing issues is now is the open public consultation. As you have seen on the agenda there is quite an enormous variety of open public consultations at the moment. I think if we would treat them in all details we could easily spend all of our call time on it, and I agreed with Olivier before today’s call that he is trying to emphasize the most important points and give us a summary. You have the floor, Olivier.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Wolf. I’ll first go through the recently submitted ALAC statements, and there were four of them. There was the ALAC statement on the interim report of the Internationalized Registration Data Working Group, which was sent on the 20th of March. The African ICANN Community adopted a statement on the ICANN Geographic Regions Review. They did a very good job on that.
And then the ALAC statement on the proposed ICANN meeting dates which emphasized one of our points which was to do with the summer being usually a summer holiday period so trying to avoid the months of July and August; and the ALAC statement on the draft process for recognition of new GNSO constituencies that was filed on the 7th of March.
We’ve since filed two more, well one statement as you might have all seen is the statement that was filed about the Board/GAC scorecard discussions. That was filed yesterday and there’s a vote going on at the moment. That took most of the week to write and it was a very good job from Evan and Cheryl and various people, and Heidi as well; she did a fantastic job of reconciling things. And parallel to this there was an ALAC comment on the Notice of Interest, the NOI from the NTIA which asked questions about the IANA contract. So these two are in progress. They’re in voting at the moment.
And then the ones which are still there to be responded to are the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Part B Working Group proposed final report… Many of these are very specialized and so we have tried to assign people who are in the know and who have inside or first-hand knowledge about those proposals. The thing that we would need, though, I think a number of them have been posted now for a review by everyone, and I would really urge everybody to read through them and make comments. I think it’s particularly important to show that we have input from everyone and not just one person writing something and everyone just saying “Yeah, okay, fine – I’m okay with it.”
So the different proposals are there. They all have a link which takes you to the public comment on the page, and I thought there was going to be a link to any of the pages that we put up. Heidi, would it be possible to do that?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, I’m actually just putting in the specific links to the GAC scorecard and the ALAC response to the NTIA NOI, but I’m just now also going to be putting in the link to the At-Large policy development space which is where we are now adding all of the currently open or drafting policy statements that are open for comment.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: That’s perfect.
Heidi Ullrich: So that page will have all of them on there and they’re just coming in so fast that I have not had time to do that. So I will put three more up today.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: You need 48 hours a day these days I’m afraid.
Heidi Ullrich: I do, yes.
Sebastien Bachollet: The first one is already up.
Heidi Ullrich: Several of them are up but the ones that will be going up today are the… Let me just take a look. They’ll be the Security, Stability & Resiliency of the DNS Review Team set of issues; the proposed recommendations for a Global Outreach Program; and the draft proposal for the study of issues related to the delegation of IDN Variant TLDs. Again, I’ve just received them last night so they are going up this morning.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Perfect. So I would urge everyone to have a look at them and comment, and most of them have a very short time for comments so please do this today or tomorrow if you can. And that’s really pretty much it. I’m not going to go into details in all of them; I think we would be spending most of this call if we did so. So back to you, Wolf. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, thanks a lot Olivier. Are there any questions from the participants on agenda item #3 – Open Public Consultations? Any questions? Any comments?
Christopher Wilkinson: This is Christopher. I think we had a very thorough reply on the Notice of Inquiry which is of considerable political importance internationally. In other respects I confess not to be quite up to speed but I appreciate the amount of work that’s gone into preparing these documents. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Thanks a lot. Olivier, any further comments? If this is not the case I suggest we continue with agenda item #3: EURALO ALS applications we received in between. There are actually two applications from the European Media Platform and the Ukrainian Internet Association, and I must admit I am especially pleased that we have two new applications from the Eastern European part. This is a region where we are so far not really well-represented and we so far do not have many members, and this would be a very good step forward for the enlargement of our membership in the Eastern European part.
Olivier and I had a first look already on these applications and Olivier was very important in facilitating these applications. I think he participated in two or three conferences in Kiev over the last twelve months, and I hope that we can formalize these applications soon and we can go through the regular due diligence procedure. And it would be my desire to have these procedures accomplished in the next weeks. It would be nice to have these two applications certified until our next General Assembly the end of May in Belgrade.
Are there any questions? Are there any comments?
Oksana Prykhodko: Thank you very much, from Oksana.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, Oksana, please.
Oksana Prykhodko: Just thank you, thank you very much.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay. And as I said I hope this procedure will be more of a formality because we know the two applicants. We are in contact with Oksana since a long time; we have met Maria from the Ukrainian Internet Association in San Francisco. Olivier and I had the opportunity for a talk with Maria there and I think there won’t be any problems to get the two applicants certified soon.
I have just one question to the staff: do you think this is realistic that we can go through the regular procedure over the next four to five weeks?
Heidi Ullrich: This is Heidi.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes please, Heidi.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, that might be a bit expedited. Normally the process takes 90 days but we can certainly fast track it. So basically we can go ahead and have the due diligence done on both and then we’ll immediately send the results of the due diligence to the region and then we’ll ask for regional advice. So it is largely up to you on how quickly you get back to us with your regional advice, and if that can be done even in April then we can start the vote ASAP. So I think in short, yes, we can.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay. From our side I can promise that I will push the regional advice from the EURALO side as much as possible.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay.
Wolf Ludwig: And I see Olivier has raised his hand.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you, Wolf. I just wanted to add to this. I have received the news today that I am invited to the Russian Internet Governance Forum in mid-May and I will certainly be carrying the EURALO flag over there to try to get some Russian At-Large Structures to join. So that’s the push East, pushing more East. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Sounds great. Okay, thank you Olivier. Heidi, you raised again?
Heidi Ullrich: Actually I was just trying to applaud but I raised my hand instead, so…
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, we’ll take this as applause. Okay, thanks a lot. Any other questions regarding agenda item #3: ALS applications?
Christopher Wilkinson: This is Christopher again.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes please.
Christopher Wilkinson: I’ll just mention to Olivier that a year ago I tried to go to the Moscow IGF. I shall not be able to try this time, but last time my application collapsed because of the very long time it took to get a Visa. So just a word of advice, Olivier – if you haven’t already got a Russian Visa that is your critical path.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you. I’ll consider that. I have already looked into it today but yes, it does look like a long path. Thanks.
Christopher Wilkinson: It was a maze from here but you’ll be able to talk that out with the Russian embassy in London, I’m sure. Good luck.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thanks.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay. I just received an SMS from Annette Mühlberg, and she is asking for a dial out. Can anybody from staff…? I think she communicated recently to you her number that should be valid, and it would be nice if we could have Annette on the call as well.
Gisella Gruber-White: We’ll dial out to Annette now.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, thanks a lot. Let me continue with the point #4 of the proposed agenda items – update on current policy issues – again. It’s the ALAC statement on the GAC/Board scorecard, which was extensively discussed in San Francisco; and the ALAC statement on the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration, NTIA Notice of Inquiry. This was mentioned by Olivier already.
Olivier, would you like to make some more comments on that?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: No thanks, Wolf, just to say that on the agenda you will have the links to those two areas directly. So if you have a few hours you have some bedtime reading. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: And if I’m not mistaken I think Heidi posted on the Adobe Connect three more links regarding these issues. Then I can continue with agenda item #5 of today’s agenda: review of EURALO activities at ICANN San Francisco meeting.
Most of you have been personally present there and participated actively in the At-Large meetings we had there, and it was a very active and creative meeting again. And I think we should concentrate on sub-point #2, At-Large Improvements. And I think on the Adobe Connect that Seth has already posted something regarding the improvements process. Seth, if you want you have the floor.
Seth Greene: Thanks, thanks very much. Yeah, I just wanted to briefly at this point report that – and again, as you mentioned, many of you were there to help this along. The Improvements Work Team’s effort is in its final, final stage at this point. Each Work Team gave its final proposals to the ALAC, presented those to the community and the ALAC in San Francisco and received some feedback on them. That feedback will be incorporated into final reports that the four Work Teams will be preparing over the next couple of weeks actually.
In fact, in order to do that the Co-Chairs all seem to be in agreement that it’s no longer necessary to have the regularly-scheduled meeting, so later today we’ll send out announcements to all Work Team members that the regularly-scheduled calls will no longer be held. Probably once the final report for the ALAC, to be presented later to the SAC and the Board, once there’s a draft of that we’ll then probably convene, each Work Team meeting at least one more time to get feedback from the Work Team members on that.
And then this stage of the project will end with those final proposals going to the ALAC and be put into the ALAC’s court to be considered. I think that’s everything right now. If there are any questions I’d be happy to answer them, but that’s I think the rundown of what happened in San Francisco.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, thanks a lot Seth. Are there any further questions from the call participants? I think due to the fact that most of you except Christopher have been personally present in San Francisco we do not need to go into much further details. But I see that Christopher has raised his hand. Christopher, you have the floor.
Christopher Wilkinson: Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to ask Sebastien if he could give us in a nutshell his interpretation of where the Board and the GAC now stand on new TLDs and particularly the application process for new TLDs. I tried to follow some of the debates online but it was quite time consuming and very difficult to assess whether one had got the total picture. But Sebastien, I’m sure the Chair will not give you more than two or three minutes so don’t try and be exhaustive; just try and give us a few highlights as to what happens next in the TLD debate.
Wolf Ludwig: Sebastien, you have the floor.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay, thank you very much, Christopher, for this question. I think we made a lot of progress, even if it could have been seen as geo-politicized by the rest of the meeting. We decided on purpose to concentrate on the new gTLD for a lot of the time for the Board, the GAC, and the Committee. What was important in my point of view is that we had two paths with community comments prior to today that we organized with the GAC; and if we can say roughly we are in agreement with one-third of the items raised by the GAC – the Board is in agreement. And we are one-third that needs to have more specific discussion, and one-third we both think we will not be able to reach an agreement.
We are still working on all that with a new schedule and I must emphasize that from my point of view it’s good progress, even if for people it could be seen as once again a new schedule. From my point it’s the first time that the Board put the schedule and it was not an adoption by the Board of a schedule made by somebody else. It was really the work done by the Board to have this schedule in front of us, and I am much more confident with this schedule than with the previous one.
But it’s important to see that At-Large and the overall community will have another opportunity to comment on specific points, on new points; and we will have in the middle of April a new version, and in the middle of May if I remember well – I need to check – but we will have one month of comments open prior to the meeting in Singapore.
And the goal is to have the Applicant Guidebook, the final one voted by the Board the 20th of June – that being a Monday – to allow everybody participating in the meeting in Singapore to have a real big feast on Wednesday evening. And every input you can give the Board to help to close the issue will be welcome.
I must add one point that I am not supposed to be speaking on behalf of the Board, I am not supposed to be a Board member here, but I think it’s important to have these sections. And I think what I’ve tried to do since I was elected is to keep the way a liaison could act. And don’t quote me as a real Board member but more because I think it’s important to keep this liaison role between the ALAC, the RALOs and the Board. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Thank you. Thank you, Sebastien, and as you know your information and advice is always welcome at the EURALO. Any further questions?
Christopher Wilkinson: Well, I just wanted to thank Sebastien but when you say one-third, one-third, one-third I guess I get the gist of it. But offline could you send us a reference to a document or a site which gives us more detailed guidance as to which topics fall into which third? I can go through them but I find- All this information is public but it’s just being able to spend the time to find it all. But if Sebastien or the staff could do that offline, don’t take too much-
Sebastien Bachollet: Christopher, my advice on that is to wait for the next version because you will try to run after what we do and we as the Board are supposed to receive the comments from the GAC and from ALAC and then we will have communication of the new version of the Guidebook with red-crossed words and there will be changes. And my advice is not to spend too much time now because in two weeks it will be a new document and it will be easier to look at that. But if you want I can find the link of course.
Christopher Wilkinson: Well, I’m patient but my constituents are not always patient and I’m expected to give them information when sometimes I don’t have it. But thank you, Wolf, for putting up with that interlude. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, thank you. Thanks a lot, Sebastien; thanks a lot, Christopher. Any further questions regarding this point? If this is not the case let me suggest to continue with our agenda and item #6, which is recent EURALO regional meetings. Actually it was not a EURALO meeting, Leipzig Internet of Things conference. It was a workshop which was organized by (inaudible) with a EURALO member and (inaudible), and I had the pleasure to participate at this workshop in Leipzig last week. It was very exciting.
Besides me there were some other EURALO members. It was Lutz Donnerhacke, it was Bill Drake, it was Avri Doria who is considering herself partly as a EURALO member as well; and from the ICANN side there was Olof Nordling, and it was a very interesting event and discussion. And I understood much more out the outline and the architecture of the concept of the Internet of Things. Perhaps, Sandra, you would like to add something?
Sandra Hoferichter: Yeah, thank you Wolf. Yes indeed it was a very intensive and worthful discussion I think. The Internet of Things is still a topic which is under development. And next to much more bigger conferences like the IATF Conference, which took place in Prague two days or one day later than the one we had in Leipzig, I think it was a very good opportunity to have this discussion in such a very close circle. We were only 25 participants because this makes the discussion on emergent issues very intense; much more intensive than you can maybe do in a greater area or a greater circle.
And I want to add that Christopher Wilkinson also tried to participate online. We did set up a… Well maybe Christopher is the better person to judge on this but we tried to do our best in terms of remote participation, which I think is a very important thing to improve not only for conferences like this but also as a very important issue to reach out to the ALSes in Europe. So I know we have the possibilities now from ICANN staff to have Adobe Connect chat rooms which we hopefully can use for conferences like this or others, or workshops, to give also the ALSes within Europe the ability to participate actively in not only conferences but also smaller workshops and other events like this. Thank you, Wolf.
Wolf Ludwig: Thanks, Sandra. Let me just underline that I think the option we discussed in San Francisco – how to improve the working tools and working platforms for RALOs in communication with the members as well – and I think the Adobe Connect room, as we experience in our monthly calls, can be an extremely helpful working tool. And I appreciate a lot all the efforts which are done by At-Large staff in this direction.
If there are no questions regarding the Leipzig conference anymore I have just one announcement. I will participate in the middle of April, the 18th and 19th of April, in a conference at the Council of Europe on new media and regulation of new media to improve freedom of expression. And this will also touch many aspects of internet governance, and I will represent EURALO at this Council of Europe conference in April in Strasbourg.
Next point and one of the main points- Yes?
Annette Mühlberg: Annette here. First hello, sorry that I was late, but it would be great if we could have those results on the list. I’m so sorry that I couldn’t come to that but if you could post those and the future of- Is it possible, Wolf, in April?
Wolf Ludwig: To post information with a link to the conference, on the Leipzig conference on the EURALO list?
Annette Mühlberg : The coming-up results of your conference in Brussels, that would be really nice.
Wolf Ludwig: Well I cannot say much about results of the conference before the conference-
Annette Mühlberg: No, no, no. I’m saying-
Wolf Ludwig: But I can post some links to the event on the mailing list.
Annette Mühlberg: Right, that would be nice. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Yeah, okay. Christopher has raised his hand?
Christopher Wilkinson: Yeah, hello Annette.
Annette Mühlberg: Hi.
Christopher Wilkinson: I was just going to say that if necessary I have the links for the Council of Europe conference as well as Wolf has them also and Olivier. I can post them and to follow on the Council of Europe list on Tuesday next week because I happen to have the opportunity once in a decade to go to Strasbourg and I’ll ask the organizers for a little bit more background about this proposal.
The debates will undoubtedly be very interesting but I must say from a political point of view it is to my mind unlikely that we will get much progress on an international or even a European (inaudible) binding treaty on the subject but I hope I’m wrong. (crosstalk)
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, just for your information this will also be part of the discussion at the European Dialogue on Internet Governance in Belgrade. There will be a plenary on new media and we decided in the preparation team for the plenaries at Versailles for this conference in April in Strasbourg we’ll be part of the inputs for Belgrade. So I promise to keep you informed on this.
Christopher Wilkinson: That is good. My home ALS in Wallonia will send two delegates to Belgrade, a Belgian and a Serbian participant, with a particular interest in multilingual aspects of new media.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay. Thanks a lot, Christopher; thanks a lot, Annette. And if you agree now let me continue with agenda item #7 on our agenda which is supposed to be key issues of our today’s calls but it is logistical planning for our next General Assembly and the items for the agenda.
Regarding the logistical planning, we agreed already some time ago with the local organizers of the EuroDIG with the Diplofoundation that EURALO General Assembly will be one of the key side events of the EuroDIG. I sent out a kind of poll three or four weeks ago, in any case it was before San Francisco, to ask for the timing of our General Assembly because it was my thinking that having our General Assembly parallel to the program of the EuroDIG would create some conflicts for many participants to set priorities either between our General Assembly and the regular EuroDIG program.
Therefore, I suggested two options – either to have the our General Assembly at the end of the EuroDIG, this would be on Tuesday afternoon or evening when most of the participants will presumably leave Belgrade already; or to have it late Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening. This means on the eve of the EuroDIG when presumably most of the participants will have already arrived.
The responses I got to this request was that the majority of the people prefer the Sunday evening option on the eve of the EuroDIG. And I will now discuss further with Diplofoundation about the rooming and about the exact timing. I think if we would have it at 6:00 in the evening this could give us two hours. The conference venue would still be open and I think we could also benefit from the facilities there. And I will also of course try to enable remote participation for our General Assembly.
But these details I have to sort out with this further in the next three weeks. As to this particular planning are there any questions or suggestions regarding logistics?
Sandra Hoferichter: Yes, I have a question, Wolf.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, Sandra.
Sandra Hoferichter: Thank you, Wolf. Captioning will be not required for the EuroDIG General Assembly, right?
Wolf Ludwig: I don’t know. I don’t think so.
Sandra Hoferichter: Okay, but you hope or you think that the remote participation is available? I mean we have our own facilities for this, right? Adobe Connect and…
Wolf Ludwig: Well at least we can organize to have Adobe Connect with it and I will discuss this with [Flatda.] Flatda didn’t say no so far, in the sense that “No, we don’t have any remote participation options.” They have to test it on Sunday, therefore there will be people in Belgrade and I hope we can combine. This is our General Assembly. I cannot promise it but I will try to organize as much as possible.
[crosstalk]
Wolf Ludwig: Yes?
Annette Mühlberg: Sandra?
Sandra Hoferichter: Yeah? I have spoken, (inaudible) Annette.
Wolf Ludwig: Just go ahead.
Annette Mühlberg: I just wanted to know is there a chance that the EURALO people stay in the same hotel? I think that would be helpful.
Wolf Ludwig: I’ve not information about hotel facilities at planning but this is an issue I can discuss with Flatda as well. I agree with you.
Annette Mühlberg: It would make things easier for transport and all this if we are all at the same place. So that really helps.
Wolf Ludwig: Right. I can imagine that there are large hotel room contingents reserved by Diplofoundation as well and I don’t think the participants will be too much dispersed around Belgrade, around the city.
Sandra Hoferichter: May I say something, Wolf?
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, please.
Sandra Hoferichter: Next to the conference venue we have two hotels which is the Hyatt Regency and the Hotel Continent Tower Belgrade. The center itself to my opinion is not in the city center at least, but the evening reception might be in the city center. So well you can either choose a hotel that is close to the conference center or a hotel which is near the city center. I don’t think it will be spread out like it was in Madrid.
Wolf Ludwig: Actually have you been in the end of December or beginning of January in Belgrade already, Sandra, for the office?
Sandra Hoferichter: I was not because due to weather the flight was cancelled.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, I see. Yeah, I remember now, yeah.
Sandra Hoferichter: I was booked in a hotel which was recommended by Flatda from Diplofoundation which was [Excervio], which is right in the middle of the city center, and they are reasonably priced.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, we will follow up this issue and I take this as a recommendation that we will try our best to get the EURALO participants grouped all in the same hotel if possible. I see Heidi’s hand was raised?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, thanks Wolf. Just a couple of things. Firstly, definitely At-Large staff can help with the logistics. We can work with Wolf, with Sandra if you’re involved with the logistics, or directly with Flatda. And we can also use our Adigo lines for remote participation. So basically all you’ll need is a telephone with a speaker phone and we should be okay. If we have additional speakers that would be very useful or microphones obviously, but we can also use our Adobe Connect as well.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, we will follow up and I will discuss the technical options with staff again. For the moment I have some more details from Flatda. I think the first thing that’s important to know is on what we can count from the venue, from the conference facilities at this point in Belgrade and then we can discuss what other options we may have or we should need to enable also remote participation for the General Assembly.
I will keep you informed on this. If there are no questions regarding logistics at the moment the of course next important point is items for the agenda. And as we agreed before, as we agreed at our last General Assembly in Vilnius, the key issue will be the bylaw modifications. The three points we discussed again in our monthly call in January, just a few minutes before today’s call I sent you an email summarizing the three points with the three respective links. And I have had extensive discussions with Matthias on this point before he left and we both agreed more or less that we need a special preparation for the General Assembly.
It is quite obvious that we won’t have a quorum, we won’t have a true certain majority of members present in Belgrade. This is clear right now. We can only make bylaw modifications with a solid majority of two-thirds of our members, and so I discussed with Matthias to make and organize an online voting tool prior to our General Assembly, let’s say two to three weeks in advance. And I would care again to contact all our members directly again to mobilize them for broad participation in this voting procedure, and we should have the results of the online voting on the bylaw modifications prior to the General Assembly.
So we’ll know in Belgrade whether we have a qualified majority for the bylaw modifications or not, because if you don’t get the majority of course we cannot do the modifications. This is quite clear.
And then at the General Assembly itself it would be more or less a formal act to approve the modifications or not and then to do the rest of the planning. The main point was the inclusion of the individual members; another important point is the suggestion on the extension of the term for Board members and EURALO officers because we have to re-elect the EURALO Chair and we have to re-elect the EURALO Secretariat in Belgrade. The last voting on that was in Mexico as you may remember; the Chair and Secretariat were elected for two years and it’s now the time to have the re-elections on the officers as well and part of our Board members.
And this in my eyes would be the key items for the agenda proposal for Belgrade. And of course I will send out a draft agenda together with a Board report four weeks before the General Assembly via the EURALO list. Are there any questions regarding this planning? I see Christopher’s and Sebastien’s approval and I see Christopher’s hand. Christopher, you have the floor.
Christopher Wilkinson: Yeah, very quickly. As I said for the quorum of ISOC Wallonia we’ll have a delegate in Belgrade and I just need to make sure that Eric Thompson is going to be in Belgrade by Sunday evening for the meeting. For the substance of the amendments I suspect I will not have any major comment. In the next few days I’ll try and look for your texts and just review them but I don’t suspect any particular issue.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, thanks a lot.
Annette Mühlberg: Annette here.
Wolf Ludwig: Yeah, Annette please.
Annette Mühlberg: I would like to take the chance when we’re in real life together that we do discuss some content which is up to date on some projects, so I think it would be great to have a little presentation of things going on at that time so that we do make some planning; also some planning for the next activities.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, and there is another point of what we need to discuss during the EURALO General Assembly and outside the General Assembly. This is a proposal we discussed in the core team of EuroDIG, and during the last preparation meetings for the EuroDIG there was a lot of thinking about how to improve the organization and the working structure of the EuroDIG. And there was a proposal on the table that we would for the future consolidate the whole process, suggest a kind of a carrier structure for the EuroDIG.
And the carrier structure, so far one of the focal points is the Council of Europe. As you know it’s a Secretariat which is based and assumed by [Suncraft]. It was a Swiss (inaudible), it was Thomas Schneider so far, and in the future according to the multi-stakeholder model we also would like to strengthen the part of the Civil Society at EuroDIG a bit more. And it was suggested that EURALO could be the focal point for Civil Society in the EuroDIG carrier structure.
There was a written proposal on this already and we discussed this in the core group, and I will forward you this proposal with the draft agenda for the General Assembly. And I think we should find some time in Belgrade at the General Assembly where our members are in favor of this idea. In my eyes it would be a great opportunity for EURALO and it would improve the standing of EURALO into the European context. I still think EuroDIG is one of the key conferences of internet governance and I think EURALO should be a key player in this respect. And this could be another important content point to be discussed and approved during our General Assembly in Belgrade.
Are there any questions?
Sandra Hoferichter: Not a question but a comment.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes please, Sandra? You’re closer to us with that.
Sandra Hoferichter: Thank you, Wolf. I just want to support the intention to involve EURALO more into the EuroDIG structure because I think this could be a very fruitful partnership in terms of outreach because we are talking about more or less the same topics. And some of you are already heavily involved in EuroDIG and this would strengthen both institutions – EURALO and EuroDIG – and I look very much forward to move on this issue. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, thanks Sandra. This is very important complementary information. Besides Sandra and me it’s Yrjö and Olivier who are actively and regularly participating in the preparation. Over the last year it was Annette as well, and I still hope that Annette will have the time and opportunity to contribute in the future as well. So there are several members from EURALO and from the Board who are quite actively involved in the whole EuroDIG process.
Annette Mühlberg: I promise I will do so. We are just organizing on the national level a preparation meeting for the EuroDIG, so we will have on the 12th of April the German IGF. And yes, right now it is just that this Enquete Commission of the German Bundestag on Internet and Digital Society, it’s just such a whole lot of work. It’s extreme.
But I just would like to take the chance to also announce that in this Enquete Commission we’ll probably within the next month have an issue that is international regulations and all this, and as soon as it comes up I want to also post these issues on the EURALO list. That’s a debate we are having.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, this is extremely helpful, Annette, and we are looking forward to your inputs and the content you are discussing at the Enquete Commission.
I trust as complementary information a suggestion I would like to make for the General Assembly. As you may remember from Vilnius there, our members who are physically present at IGF and attending our General Assembly it will be a similar situation and a similar case for Belgrade; and to have a kind of reasonable quorum for the Assembly, not for bylaw modifications but for regular business.
You may recall that there was a transfer of votes in two cases in Vilnius. Sebastien represented ISOC France and E-Seniors. From the Swiss side I represented Comunica-ch and I had also a transfer vote from Wikimedia Switzerland. And I suggest to all of our members who will be present there to contact other members in their country and to organize some of these transfer votes for Belgrade as well. By this means we can assure that we will have a kind of reasonable quorum issues in Belgrade again.
Any further questions? Any further comments? I see no hands raised anymore. I take this as approval.
Let me continue with the last point on our agenda. This is recent and upcoming activities of ALAC and EURALO members, and I think much of these upcoming activities have already been mentioned. The two key activities I see at the moment, as I said, is the conference of the Council of Europe in April in Strasbourg and then afterwards of course the European Dialogue on Internet Governance, what will be for our region two key events. And as Annette mentioned there will be on the 12th of April the National German IGF and I guess there may be some more national IGF’s. I don’t have the timetable of the others but I know that several other national European IGF’s are in the planning and we will follow this up.
Sandra Hoferichter: Wolf?
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, Sandra?
Sandra Hoferichter: Yes, it’s me again. We should also mention the ICANN-Studienkreis in Budapest on the 28th and 29th of April.
Wolf Ludwig: Oh, thanks a lot. Yes, thanks a lot, Sandra. I had a sort of blank out for not directly memorizing this, but this is of course also traditionally quite an important event for Europe. The ICANN-Studienkreis, I think it’s the 12th?
Sandra Hoferichter: The 28th and 29th of April.
Wolf Ludwig: No, it’s the 12th or 13th edition. It’s the 12th meeting of the Studienkreis, and the Studienkreis existed a long time before EURALO was created. And I was invited to represent EURALO at the ICANN-Studienkreis meeting as well, this time at the end of April in Budapest. And this of course is again a great opportunity for outreach, and I will contact staff before because I do not have any EURALO flyers anymore. They were all distributed at IGF in Vilnius and perhaps we could get some more copies of that.
I see Oksana’s hand raised on the Adobe Connect?
Oksana Prykhodko: Yes, thank you, but actually I would like to inform you about a certain Ukrainian IGF in the beginning of September. And we also will try to organize a training center before this Ukrainian IGF, and you are invited and welcome to the Ukraine.
And one more issue – now we are preparing to sign a memorandum on transparency and accountability on the information society building up in Ukraine. And it would be great to receive support from EURALO because EURALO helped a lot to receive more information on IDN for Ukraine for example with Yrjö at the San Francisco meeting and help of Olivier and Wolf. That is priceless, and Sebastien, of course. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, thanks a lot for this additional information, Oksana, and may I ask all of you whenever you come across some additional information on national IGF’s, please forward them to the EURALO list. Please post them on the EURALO list and I can accomplish them on the EURALO workspace. So we’ll have by this again an overview and a kind of planning instrument for the next upcoming events in our region.
Are there any further questions, suggestions, comments? If this is not the case we are 13 minutes over our call time. Let me thank all of you for your active and constructive participation again, and I am looking forward to some more information exchanges via our list.
Thanks a lot to all of you, to staff, to Gisella, to Seth, to Heidi, and we will follow up via the list. Good bye and have a nice evening.
[End of Transcript]
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Wolf Ludwig: Okay, I think we should start with our regular meeting now, I think with a roll call for participants and apologies that we had already. And we then should have a look on the summary minutes from our last call. I guess that all of you or most of you have seen them, and I would like to ask you whether anybody has some more comments, questions; or whether the minutes from our last call can be approved.
Sebastien Bachollet: I am sorry. I am on chat with Olivier. He is waiting for a call from Adigo, which would be good if he can join us prior, before we really start this meeting. I guess in our case it would be really good to have Olivier on the call, yes of course.
Gisella Gruber-White: If you’ll just bear with me for a minute then I’ve just asked Olivier to send us through his number because his mobile wasn’t working for the previous call.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, so we’ll wait a few more minutes until Olivier can make it on the call on a good connection.
Gisella Gruber-White: Please do.
Wolf Ludwig: In the meantime I would like to ask the others to have a close look on the minutes from the last call and on the action items as well so that we can check and approve this as quick as possible.
Gisella Gruber-White: I have a number for Olivier; it will only take a few minutes.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, go ahead.
Sebastien Bachollet: Olivier’s in London in case of-
Gisella Gruber-White: Yes, that’s sorted. We just had problems with his mobile previously.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay.
Heidi Ullrich: Wolf, this is Heidi.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes please.
Heidi Ullrich: If you would like me to start with currently open policy briefings that we’re currently working on I can start that until Olivier arrives.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I’m here!
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, there you are.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, Olivier’s here.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you!
Heidi Ullrich: Thanks.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, thanks a lot Olivier, welcome back.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: We just interrupted the meeting for a couple of minutes and we are now on the agenda point, review of the minutes from the last call and the action items.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Perfect.
Wolf Ludwig: And I was asking the participants if there are any questions, any comments regarding the summary minutes from 15 February 2011. If this is not the case I think we can approve the summary minutes.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yep.
Wolf Ludwig: I’ve heard no objections, then let’s have a quick look at the action items. There was not much. We had two points: Siranush will send her comments on the SWOT analysis to Wolf and Olivier at the end of the week – that’s what she finally did; and all the EURALO members will review the SWOT analysis to identify points of particular importance.
I’m not sure whether there’s some more comments to the draft there made by our members, but I think we can consider the action items as accomplished as well.
And the next point on our agenda among the standing issues is now is the open public consultation. As you have seen on the agenda there is quite an enormous variety of open public consultations at the moment. I think if we would treat them in all details we could easily spend all of our call time on it, and I agreed with Olivier before today’s call that he is trying to emphasize the most important points and give us a summary. You have the floor, Olivier.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Wolf. I’ll first go through the recently submitted ALAC statements, and there were four of them. There was the ALAC statement on the interim report of the Internationalized Registration Data Working Group, which was sent on the 20th of March. The African ICANN Community adopted a statement on the ICANN Geographic Regions Review. They did a very good job on that.
And then the ALAC statement on the proposed ICANN meeting dates which emphasized one of our points which was to do with the summer being usually a summer holiday period so trying to avoid the months of July and August; and the ALAC statement on the draft process for recognition of new GNSO constituencies that was filed on the 7th of March.
We’ve since filed two more, well one statement as you might have all seen is the statement that was filed about the Board/GAC scorecard discussions. That was filed yesterday and there’s a vote going on at the moment. That took most of the week to write and it was a very good job from Evan and Cheryl and various people, and Heidi as well; she did a fantastic job of reconciling things. And parallel to this there was an ALAC comment on the Notice of Interest, the NOI from the NTIA which asked questions about the IANA contract. So these two are in progress. They’re in voting at the moment.
And then the ones which are still there to be responded to are the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Part B Working Group proposed final report… Many of these are very specialized and so we have tried to assign people who are in the know and who have inside or first-hand knowledge about those proposals. The thing that we would need, though, I think a number of them have been posted now for a review by everyone, and I would really urge everybody to read through them and make comments. I think it’s particularly important to show that we have input from everyone and not just one person writing something and everyone just saying “Yeah, okay, fine – I’m okay with it.”
So the different proposals are there. They all have a link which takes you to the public comment on the page, and I thought there was going to be a link to any of the pages that we put up. Heidi, would it be possible to do that?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, I’m actually just putting in the specific links to the GAC scorecard and the ALAC response to the NTIA NOI, but I’m just now also going to be putting in the link to the At-Large policy development space which is where we are now adding all of the currently open or drafting policy statements that are open for comment.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: That’s perfect.
Heidi Ullrich: So that page will have all of them on there and they’re just coming in so fast that I have not had time to do that. So I will put three more up today.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: You need 48 hours a day these days I’m afraid.
Heidi Ullrich: I do, yes.
Sebastien Bachollet: The first one is already up.
Heidi Ullrich: Several of them are up but the ones that will be going up today are the… Let me just take a look. They’ll be the Security, Stability & Resiliency of the DNS Review Team set of issues; the proposed recommendations for a Global Outreach Program; and the draft proposal for the study of issues related to the delegation of IDN Variant TLDs. Again, I’ve just received them last night so they are going up this morning.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Perfect. So I would urge everyone to have a look at them and comment, and most of them have a very short time for comments so please do this today or tomorrow if you can. And that’s really pretty much it. I’m not going to go into details in all of them; I think we would be spending most of this call if we did so. So back to you, Wolf. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, thanks a lot Olivier. Are there any questions from the participants on agenda item #3 – Open Public Consultations? Any questions? Any comments?
Christopher Wilkinson: This is Christopher. I think we had a very thorough reply on the Notice of Inquiry which is of considerable political importance internationally. In other respects I confess not to be quite up to speed but I appreciate the amount of work that’s gone into preparing these documents. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Thanks a lot. Olivier, any further comments? If this is not the case I suggest we continue with agenda item #3: EURALO ALS applications we received in between. There are actually two applications from the European Media Platform and the Ukrainian Internet Association, and I must admit I am especially pleased that we have two new applications from the Eastern European part. This is a region where we are so far not really well-represented and we so far do not have many members, and this would be a very good step forward for the enlargement of our membership in the Eastern European part.
Olivier and I had a first look already on these applications and Olivier was very important in facilitating these applications. I think he participated in two or three conferences in Kiev over the last twelve months, and I hope that we can formalize these applications soon and we can go through the regular due diligence procedure. And it would be my desire to have these procedures accomplished in the next weeks. It would be nice to have these two applications certified until our next General Assembly the end of May in Belgrade.
Are there any questions? Are there any comments?
Oksana Prykhodko: Thank you very much, from Oksana.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, Oksana, please.
Oksana Prykhodko: Just thank you, thank you very much.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay. And as I said I hope this procedure will be more of a formality because we know the two applicants. We are in contact with Oksana since a long time; we have met Maria from the Ukrainian Internet Association in San Francisco. Olivier and I had the opportunity for a talk with Maria there and I think there won’t be any problems to get the two applicants certified soon.
I have just one question to the staff: do you think this is realistic that we can go through the regular procedure over the next four to five weeks?
Heidi Ullrich: This is Heidi.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes please, Heidi.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, that might be a bit expedited. Normally the process takes 90 days but we can certainly fast track it. So basically we can go ahead and have the due diligence done on both and then we’ll immediately send the results of the due diligence to the region and then we’ll ask for regional advice. So it is largely up to you on how quickly you get back to us with your regional advice, and if that can be done even in April then we can start the vote ASAP. So I think in short, yes, we can.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay. From our side I can promise that I will push the regional advice from the EURALO side as much as possible.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay.
Wolf Ludwig: And I see Olivier has raised his hand.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you, Wolf. I just wanted to add to this. I have received the news today that I am invited to the Russian Internet Governance Forum in mid-May and I will certainly be carrying the EURALO flag over there to try to get some Russian At-Large Structures to join. So that’s the push East, pushing more East. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Sounds great. Okay, thank you Olivier. Heidi, you raised again?
Heidi Ullrich: Actually I was just trying to applaud but I raised my hand instead, so…
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, we’ll take this as applause. Okay, thanks a lot. Any other questions regarding agenda item #3: ALS applications?
Christopher Wilkinson: This is Christopher again.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes please.
Christopher Wilkinson: I’ll just mention to Olivier that a year ago I tried to go to the Moscow IGF. I shall not be able to try this time, but last time my application collapsed because of the very long time it took to get a Visa. So just a word of advice, Olivier – if you haven’t already got a Russian Visa that is your critical path.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you. I’ll consider that. I have already looked into it today but yes, it does look like a long path. Thanks.
Christopher Wilkinson: It was a maze from here but you’ll be able to talk that out with the Russian embassy in London, I’m sure. Good luck.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thanks.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay. I just received an SMS from Annette Mühlberg, and she is asking for a dial out. Can anybody from staff…? I think she communicated recently to you her number that should be valid, and it would be nice if we could have Annette on the call as well.
Gisella Gruber-White: We’ll dial out to Annette now.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, thanks a lot. Let me continue with the point #4 of the proposed agenda items – update on current policy issues – again. It’s the ALAC statement on the GAC/Board scorecard, which was extensively discussed in San Francisco; and the ALAC statement on the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration, NTIA Notice of Inquiry. This was mentioned by Olivier already.
Olivier, would you like to make some more comments on that?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: No thanks, Wolf, just to say that on the agenda you will have the links to those two areas directly. So if you have a few hours you have some bedtime reading. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: And if I’m not mistaken I think Heidi posted on the Adobe Connect three more links regarding these issues. Then I can continue with agenda item #5 of today’s agenda: review of EURALO activities at ICANN San Francisco meeting.
Most of you have been personally present there and participated actively in the At-Large meetings we had there, and it was a very active and creative meeting again. And I think we should concentrate on sub-point #2, At-Large Improvements. And I think on the Adobe Connect that Seth has already posted something regarding the improvements process. Seth, if you want you have the floor.
Seth Greene: Thanks, thanks very much. Yeah, I just wanted to briefly at this point report that – and again, as you mentioned, many of you were there to help this along. The Improvements Work Team’s effort is in its final, final stage at this point. Each Work Team gave its final proposals to the ALAC, presented those to the community and the ALAC in San Francisco and received some feedback on them. That feedback will be incorporated into final reports that the four Work Teams will be preparing over the next couple of weeks actually.
In fact, in order to do that the Co-Chairs all seem to be in agreement that it’s no longer necessary to have the regularly-scheduled meeting, so later today we’ll send out announcements to all Work Team members that the regularly-scheduled calls will no longer be held. Probably once the final report for the ALAC, to be presented later to the SAC and the Board, once there’s a draft of that we’ll then probably convene, each Work Team meeting at least one more time to get feedback from the Work Team members on that.
And then this stage of the project will end with those final proposals going to the ALAC and be put into the ALAC’s court to be considered. I think that’s everything right now. If there are any questions I’d be happy to answer them, but that’s I think the rundown of what happened in San Francisco.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, thanks a lot Seth. Are there any further questions from the call participants? I think due to the fact that most of you except Christopher have been personally present in San Francisco we do not need to go into much further details. But I see that Christopher has raised his hand. Christopher, you have the floor.
Christopher Wilkinson: Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to ask Sebastien if he could give us in a nutshell his interpretation of where the Board and the GAC now stand on new TLDs and particularly the application process for new TLDs. I tried to follow some of the debates online but it was quite time consuming and very difficult to assess whether one had got the total picture. But Sebastien, I’m sure the Chair will not give you more than two or three minutes so don’t try and be exhaustive; just try and give us a few highlights as to what happens next in the TLD debate.
Wolf Ludwig: Sebastien, you have the floor.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay, thank you very much, Christopher, for this question. I think we made a lot of progress, even if it could have been seen as geo-politicized by the rest of the meeting. We decided on purpose to concentrate on the new gTLD for a lot of the time for the Board, the GAC, and the Committee. What was important in my point of view is that we had two paths with community comments prior to today that we organized with the GAC; and if we can say roughly we are in agreement with one-third of the items raised by the GAC – the Board is in agreement. And we are one-third that needs to have more specific discussion, and one-third we both think we will not be able to reach an agreement.
We are still working on all that with a new schedule and I must emphasize that from my point of view it’s good progress, even if for people it could be seen as once again a new schedule. From my point it’s the first time that the Board put the schedule and it was not an adoption by the Board of a schedule made by somebody else. It was really the work done by the Board to have this schedule in front of us, and I am much more confident with this schedule than with the previous one.
But it’s important to see that At-Large and the overall community will have another opportunity to comment on specific points, on new points; and we will have in the middle of April a new version, and in the middle of May if I remember well – I need to check – but we will have one month of comments open prior to the meeting in Singapore.
And the goal is to have the Applicant Guidebook, the final one voted by the Board the 20th of June – that being a Monday – to allow everybody participating in the meeting in Singapore to have a real big feast on Wednesday evening. And every input you can give the Board to help to close the issue will be welcome.
I must add one point that I am not supposed to be speaking on behalf of the Board, I am not supposed to be a Board member here, but I think it’s important to have these sections. And I think what I’ve tried to do since I was elected is to keep the way a liaison could act. And don’t quote me as a real Board member but more because I think it’s important to keep this liaison role between the ALAC, the RALOs and the Board. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Thank you. Thank you, Sebastien, and as you know your information and advice is always welcome at the EURALO. Any further questions?
Christopher Wilkinson: Well, I just wanted to thank Sebastien but when you say one-third, one-third, one-third I guess I get the gist of it. But offline could you send us a reference to a document or a site which gives us more detailed guidance as to which topics fall into which third? I can go through them but I find- All this information is public but it’s just being able to spend the time to find it all. But if Sebastien or the staff could do that offline, don’t take too much-
Sebastien Bachollet: Christopher, my advice on that is to wait for the next version because you will try to run after what we do and we as the Board are supposed to receive the comments from the GAC and from ALAC and then we will have communication of the new version of the Guidebook with red-crossed words and there will be changes. And my advice is not to spend too much time now because in two weeks it will be a new document and it will be easier to look at that. But if you want I can find the link of course.
Christopher Wilkinson: Well, I’m patient but my constituents are not always patient and I’m expected to give them information when sometimes I don’t have it. But thank you, Wolf, for putting up with that interlude. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, thank you. Thanks a lot, Sebastien; thanks a lot, Christopher. Any further questions regarding this point? If this is not the case let me suggest to continue with our agenda and item #6, which is recent EURALO regional meetings. Actually it was not a EURALO meeting, Leipzig Internet of Things conference. It was a workshop which was organized by (inaudible) with a EURALO member and (inaudible), and I had the pleasure to participate at this workshop in Leipzig last week. It was very exciting.
Besides me there were some other EURALO members. It was Lutz Donnerhacke, it was Bill Drake, it was Avri Doria who is considering herself partly as a EURALO member as well; and from the ICANN side there was Olof Nordling, and it was a very interesting event and discussion. And I understood much more out the outline and the architecture of the concept of the Internet of Things. Perhaps, Sandra, you would like to add something?
Sandra Hoferichter: Yeah, thank you Wolf. Yes indeed it was a very intensive and worthful discussion I think. The Internet of Things is still a topic which is under development. And next to much more bigger conferences like the IATF Conference, which took place in Prague two days or one day later than the one we had in Leipzig, I think it was a very good opportunity to have this discussion in such a very close circle. We were only 25 participants because this makes the discussion on emergent issues very intense; much more intensive than you can maybe do in a greater area or a greater circle.
And I want to add that Christopher Wilkinson also tried to participate online. We did set up a… Well maybe Christopher is the better person to judge on this but we tried to do our best in terms of remote participation, which I think is a very important thing to improve not only for conferences like this but also as a very important issue to reach out to the ALSes in Europe. So I know we have the possibilities now from ICANN staff to have Adobe Connect chat rooms which we hopefully can use for conferences like this or others, or workshops, to give also the ALSes within Europe the ability to participate actively in not only conferences but also smaller workshops and other events like this. Thank you, Wolf.
Wolf Ludwig: Thanks, Sandra. Let me just underline that I think the option we discussed in San Francisco – how to improve the working tools and working platforms for RALOs in communication with the members as well – and I think the Adobe Connect room, as we experience in our monthly calls, can be an extremely helpful working tool. And I appreciate a lot all the efforts which are done by At-Large staff in this direction.
If there are no questions regarding the Leipzig conference anymore I have just one announcement. I will participate in the middle of April, the 18th and 19th of April, in a conference at the Council of Europe on new media and regulation of new media to improve freedom of expression. And this will also touch many aspects of internet governance, and I will represent EURALO at this Council of Europe conference in April in Strasbourg.
Next point and one of the main points- Yes?
Annette Mühlberg: Annette here. First hello, sorry that I was late, but it would be great if we could have those results on the list. I’m so sorry that I couldn’t come to that but if you could post those and the future of- Is it possible, Wolf, in April?
Wolf Ludwig: To post information with a link to the conference, on the Leipzig conference on the EURALO list?
Annette Mühlberg : The coming-up results of your conference in Brussels, that would be really nice.
Wolf Ludwig: Well I cannot say much about results of the conference before the conference-
Annette Mühlberg: No, no, no. I’m saying-
Wolf Ludwig: But I can post some links to the event on the mailing list.
Annette Mühlberg: Right, that would be nice. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Yeah, okay. Christopher has raised his hand?
Christopher Wilkinson: Yeah, hello Annette.
Annette Mühlberg: Hi.
Christopher Wilkinson: I was just going to say that if necessary I have the links for the Council of Europe conference as well as Wolf has them also and Olivier. I can post them and to follow on the Council of Europe list on Tuesday next week because I happen to have the opportunity once in a decade to go to Strasbourg and I’ll ask the organizers for a little bit more background about this proposal.
The debates will undoubtedly be very interesting but I must say from a political point of view it is to my mind unlikely that we will get much progress on an international or even a European (inaudible) binding treaty on the subject but I hope I’m wrong. (crosstalk)
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, just for your information this will also be part of the discussion at the European Dialogue on Internet Governance in Belgrade. There will be a plenary on new media and we decided in the preparation team for the plenaries at Versailles for this conference in April in Strasbourg we’ll be part of the inputs for Belgrade. So I promise to keep you informed on this.
Christopher Wilkinson: That is good. My home ALS in Wallonia will send two delegates to Belgrade, a Belgian and a Serbian participant, with a particular interest in multilingual aspects of new media.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay. Thanks a lot, Christopher; thanks a lot, Annette. And if you agree now let me continue with agenda item #7 on our agenda which is supposed to be key issues of our today’s calls but it is logistical planning for our next General Assembly and the items for the agenda.
Regarding the logistical planning, we agreed already some time ago with the local organizers of the EuroDIG with the Diplofoundation that EURALO General Assembly will be one of the key side events of the EuroDIG. I sent out a kind of poll three or four weeks ago, in any case it was before San Francisco, to ask for the timing of our General Assembly because it was my thinking that having our General Assembly parallel to the program of the EuroDIG would create some conflicts for many participants to set priorities either between our General Assembly and the regular EuroDIG program.
Therefore, I suggested two options – either to have the our General Assembly at the end of the EuroDIG, this would be on Tuesday afternoon or evening when most of the participants will presumably leave Belgrade already; or to have it late Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening. This means on the eve of the EuroDIG when presumably most of the participants will have already arrived.
The responses I got to this request was that the majority of the people prefer the Sunday evening option on the eve of the EuroDIG. And I will now discuss further with Diplofoundation about the rooming and about the exact timing. I think if we would have it at 6:00 in the evening this could give us two hours. The conference venue would still be open and I think we could also benefit from the facilities there. And I will also of course try to enable remote participation for our General Assembly.
But these details I have to sort out with this further in the next three weeks. As to this particular planning are there any questions or suggestions regarding logistics?
Sandra Hoferichter: Yes, I have a question, Wolf.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, Sandra.
Sandra Hoferichter: Thank you, Wolf. Captioning will be not required for the EuroDIG General Assembly, right?
Wolf Ludwig: I don’t know. I don’t think so.
Sandra Hoferichter: Okay, but you hope or you think that the remote participation is available? I mean we have our own facilities for this, right? Adobe Connect and…
Wolf Ludwig: Well at least we can organize to have Adobe Connect with it and I will discuss this with [Flatda.] Flatda didn’t say no so far, in the sense that “No, we don’t have any remote participation options.” They have to test it on Sunday, therefore there will be people in Belgrade and I hope we can combine. This is our General Assembly. I cannot promise it but I will try to organize as much as possible.
[crosstalk]
Wolf Ludwig: Yes?
Annette Mühlberg: Sandra?
Sandra Hoferichter: Yeah? I have spoken, (inaudible) Annette.
Wolf Ludwig: Just go ahead.
Annette Mühlberg: I just wanted to know is there a chance that the EURALO people stay in the same hotel? I think that would be helpful.
Wolf Ludwig: I’ve not information about hotel facilities at planning but this is an issue I can discuss with Flatda as well. I agree with you.
Annette Mühlberg: It would make things easier for transport and all this if we are all at the same place. So that really helps.
Wolf Ludwig: Right. I can imagine that there are large hotel room contingents reserved by Diplofoundation as well and I don’t think the participants will be too much dispersed around Belgrade, around the city.
Sandra Hoferichter: May I say something, Wolf?
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, please.
Sandra Hoferichter: Next to the conference venue we have two hotels which is the Hyatt Regency and the Hotel Continent Tower Belgrade. The center itself to my opinion is not in the city center at least, but the evening reception might be in the city center. So well you can either choose a hotel that is close to the conference center or a hotel which is near the city center. I don’t think it will be spread out like it was in Madrid.
Wolf Ludwig: Actually have you been in the end of December or beginning of January in Belgrade already, Sandra, for the office?
Sandra Hoferichter: I was not because due to weather the flight was cancelled.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, I see. Yeah, I remember now, yeah.
Sandra Hoferichter: I was booked in a hotel which was recommended by Flatda from Diplofoundation which was [Excervio], which is right in the middle of the city center, and they are reasonably priced.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, we will follow up this issue and I take this as a recommendation that we will try our best to get the EURALO participants grouped all in the same hotel if possible. I see Heidi’s hand was raised?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, thanks Wolf. Just a couple of things. Firstly, definitely At-Large staff can help with the logistics. We can work with Wolf, with Sandra if you’re involved with the logistics, or directly with Flatda. And we can also use our Adigo lines for remote participation. So basically all you’ll need is a telephone with a speaker phone and we should be okay. If we have additional speakers that would be very useful or microphones obviously, but we can also use our Adobe Connect as well.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, we will follow up and I will discuss the technical options with staff again. For the moment I have some more details from Flatda. I think the first thing that’s important to know is on what we can count from the venue, from the conference facilities at this point in Belgrade and then we can discuss what other options we may have or we should need to enable also remote participation for the General Assembly.
I will keep you informed on this. If there are no questions regarding logistics at the moment the of course next important point is items for the agenda. And as we agreed before, as we agreed at our last General Assembly in Vilnius, the key issue will be the bylaw modifications. The three points we discussed again in our monthly call in January, just a few minutes before today’s call I sent you an email summarizing the three points with the three respective links. And I have had extensive discussions with Matthias on this point before he left and we both agreed more or less that we need a special preparation for the General Assembly.
It is quite obvious that we won’t have a quorum, we won’t have a true certain majority of members present in Belgrade. This is clear right now. We can only make bylaw modifications with a solid majority of two-thirds of our members, and so I discussed with Matthias to make and organize an online voting tool prior to our General Assembly, let’s say two to three weeks in advance. And I would care again to contact all our members directly again to mobilize them for broad participation in this voting procedure, and we should have the results of the online voting on the bylaw modifications prior to the General Assembly.
So we’ll know in Belgrade whether we have a qualified majority for the bylaw modifications or not, because if you don’t get the majority of course we cannot do the modifications. This is quite clear.
And then at the General Assembly itself it would be more or less a formal act to approve the modifications or not and then to do the rest of the planning. The main point was the inclusion of the individual members; another important point is the suggestion on the extension of the term for Board members and EURALO officers because we have to re-elect the EURALO Chair and we have to re-elect the EURALO Secretariat in Belgrade. The last voting on that was in Mexico as you may remember; the Chair and Secretariat were elected for two years and it’s now the time to have the re-elections on the officers as well and part of our Board members.
And this in my eyes would be the key items for the agenda proposal for Belgrade. And of course I will send out a draft agenda together with a Board report four weeks before the General Assembly via the EURALO list. Are there any questions regarding this planning? I see Christopher’s and Sebastien’s approval and I see Christopher’s hand. Christopher, you have the floor.
Christopher Wilkinson: Yeah, very quickly. As I said for the quorum of ISOC Wallonia we’ll have a delegate in Belgrade and I just need to make sure that Eric Thompson is going to be in Belgrade by Sunday evening for the meeting. For the substance of the amendments I suspect I will not have any major comment. In the next few days I’ll try and look for your texts and just review them but I don’t suspect any particular issue.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, thanks a lot.
Annette Mühlberg: Annette here.
Wolf Ludwig: Yeah, Annette please.
Annette Mühlberg: I would like to take the chance when we’re in real life together that we do discuss some content which is up to date on some projects, so I think it would be great to have a little presentation of things going on at that time so that we do make some planning; also some planning for the next activities.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, and there is another point of what we need to discuss during the EURALO General Assembly and outside the General Assembly. This is a proposal we discussed in the core team of EuroDIG, and during the last preparation meetings for the EuroDIG there was a lot of thinking about how to improve the organization and the working structure of the EuroDIG. And there was a proposal on the table that we would for the future consolidate the whole process, suggest a kind of a carrier structure for the EuroDIG.
And the carrier structure, so far one of the focal points is the Council of Europe. As you know it’s a Secretariat which is based and assumed by [Suncraft]. It was a Swiss (inaudible), it was Thomas Schneider so far, and in the future according to the multi-stakeholder model we also would like to strengthen the part of the Civil Society at EuroDIG a bit more. And it was suggested that EURALO could be the focal point for Civil Society in the EuroDIG carrier structure.
There was a written proposal on this already and we discussed this in the core group, and I will forward you this proposal with the draft agenda for the General Assembly. And I think we should find some time in Belgrade at the General Assembly where our members are in favor of this idea. In my eyes it would be a great opportunity for EURALO and it would improve the standing of EURALO into the European context. I still think EuroDIG is one of the key conferences of internet governance and I think EURALO should be a key player in this respect. And this could be another important content point to be discussed and approved during our General Assembly in Belgrade.
Are there any questions?
Sandra Hoferichter: Not a question but a comment.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes please, Sandra? You’re closer to us with that.
Sandra Hoferichter: Thank you, Wolf. I just want to support the intention to involve EURALO more into the EuroDIG structure because I think this could be a very fruitful partnership in terms of outreach because we are talking about more or less the same topics. And some of you are already heavily involved in EuroDIG and this would strengthen both institutions – EURALO and EuroDIG – and I look very much forward to move on this issue. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, thanks Sandra. This is very important complementary information. Besides Sandra and me it’s Yrjö and Olivier who are actively and regularly participating in the preparation. Over the last year it was Annette as well, and I still hope that Annette will have the time and opportunity to contribute in the future as well. So there are several members from EURALO and from the Board who are quite actively involved in the whole EuroDIG process.
Annette Mühlberg: I promise I will do so. We are just organizing on the national level a preparation meeting for the EuroDIG, so we will have on the 12th of April the German IGF. And yes, right now it is just that this Enquete Commission of the German Bundestag on Internet and Digital Society, it’s just such a whole lot of work. It’s extreme.
But I just would like to take the chance to also announce that in this Enquete Commission we’ll probably within the next month have an issue that is international regulations and all this, and as soon as it comes up I want to also post these issues on the EURALO list. That’s a debate we are having.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, this is extremely helpful, Annette, and we are looking forward to your inputs and the content you are discussing at the Enquete Commission.
I trust as complementary information a suggestion I would like to make for the General Assembly. As you may remember from Vilnius there, our members who are physically present at IGF and attending our General Assembly it will be a similar situation and a similar case for Belgrade; and to have a kind of reasonable quorum for the Assembly, not for bylaw modifications but for regular business.
You may recall that there was a transfer of votes in two cases in Vilnius. Sebastien represented ISOC France and E-Seniors. From the Swiss side I represented Comunica-ch and I had also a transfer vote from Wikimedia Switzerland. And I suggest to all of our members who will be present there to contact other members in their country and to organize some of these transfer votes for Belgrade as well. By this means we can assure that we will have a kind of reasonable quorum issues in Belgrade again.
Any further questions? Any further comments? I see no hands raised anymore. I take this as approval.
Let me continue with the last point on our agenda. This is recent and upcoming activities of ALAC and EURALO members, and I think much of these upcoming activities have already been mentioned. The two key activities I see at the moment, as I said, is the conference of the Council of Europe in April in Strasbourg and then afterwards of course the European Dialogue on Internet Governance, what will be for our region two key events. And as Annette mentioned there will be on the 12th of April the National German IGF and I guess there may be some more national IGF’s. I don’t have the timetable of the others but I know that several other national European IGF’s are in the planning and we will follow this up.
Sandra Hoferichter: Wolf?
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, Sandra?
Sandra Hoferichter: Yes, it’s me again. We should also mention the ICANN-Studienkreis in Budapest on the 28th and 29th of April.
Wolf Ludwig: Oh, thanks a lot. Yes, thanks a lot, Sandra. I had a sort of blank out for not directly memorizing this, but this is of course also traditionally quite an important event for Europe. The ICANN-Studienkreis, I think it’s the 12th?
Sandra Hoferichter: The 28th and 29th of April.
Wolf Ludwig: No, it’s the 12th or 13th edition. It’s the 12th meeting of the Studienkreis, and the Studienkreis existed a long time before EURALO was created. And I was invited to represent EURALO at the ICANN-Studienkreis meeting as well, this time at the end of April in Budapest. And this of course is again a great opportunity for outreach, and I will contact staff before because I do not have any EURALO flyers anymore. They were all distributed at IGF in Vilnius and perhaps we could get some more copies of that.
I see Oksana’s hand raised on the Adobe Connect?
Oksana Prykhodko: Yes, thank you, but actually I would like to inform you about a certain Ukrainian IGF in the beginning of September. And we also will try to organize a training center before this Ukrainian IGF, and you are invited and welcome to the Ukraine.
And one more issue – now we are preparing to sign a memorandum on transparency and accountability on the information society building up in Ukraine. And it would be great to receive support from EURALO because EURALO helped a lot to receive more information on IDN for Ukraine for example with Yrjö at the San Francisco meeting and help of Olivier and Wolf. That is priceless, and Sebastien, of course. Thank you.
Wolf Ludwig: Okay, thanks a lot for this additional information, Oksana, and may I ask all of you whenever you come across some additional information on national IGF’s, please forward them to the EURALO list. Please post them on the EURALO list and I can accomplish them on the EURALO workspace. So we’ll have by this again an overview and a kind of planning instrument for the next upcoming events in our region.
Are there any further questions, suggestions, comments? If this is not the case we are 13 minutes over our call time. Let me thank all of you for your active and constructive participation again, and I am looking forward to some more information exchanges via our list.
Thanks a lot to all of you, to staff, to Gisella, to Seth, to Heidi, and we will follow up via the list. Good bye and have a nice evening.
