LACRALO Monthly Teleconference for April 2008
Summary Minutes
Minutes Taken By: ICANN Staff (N. Ashton-Hart)
Present: C Samuels, C Aguirre, A Basilio, JL Barzallo, A Piazza, J O Salgueiro, S Ricciardi, R Medina, M Altamira (late join)
Staff: N Ashton-Hart, F Teboul
Absent: W Davalos, S Herlein Leite, R Medina, S Salinas Porto
The Secretariat called the meeting to order at 13:25 UTC.
The Agenda was adopted without objection.
A Piazza noted that he had made a comment in relation to the minutes on the page but did not insist that the minutes be amended to include it as long as it was taken note of. There was no objection.
C Aguirre proposed that it was essential to have a spanish edition of the minutes as otherwise the spanish speakers will be unable to evaluate the minutes. The Staff noted that it would arrange for the minutes to be translated but drew attention to the fact that comments made independently on two different language versions would present an administrative difficulty to reconcile them into the same text in two languages.
The staff noted that it would arrange for the previous month’s minutes and this month’s minutes to be translated, at which point at the next meeting both sets could be adopted. This was accepted unanimously.
The Secretariat noted the progress of the planning of the proposed June GA. LACNIC are interested in helping to fund the meeting if it is held alongside another meeting in Brazil, at Salvador de Bahia, and in fact this would allow cost savings as for example meeting space could be donated. This would move up the date of the GA by about two weeks however.
A proposal will be drawn up shortly. 17 ALSes have said they will attend if they receive travel support, with two additional participants.
The Secretariat noted that the jabber room had been setup and the information on how to connect would shortly be available.
A Piazza noted that LACNIC did ask what level of funding would be necessary and noted that there would be a considerable reduction in the expense if the meeting were held in Salvador de Bahia.
The Secretariat notes that LACNIC does expect a formal proposal so that their board may decide upon the proposal.
C Aguirre noted that it was important to remember that the MoU with ICANN and LACRALO did provide for support for regional operations. He wanted to know if there was budget provision for General Assemblies in each region going forward.
S Ricciardi noted that as the original drafter of the MoU he wished to share some of the experience in relation to these matters. The objective originally was that each RALO would be self-sustaining. What has happened is that ICANN has been pouring money into the capacity building for the community, including staff support recently increased. We need to keep these factors in mind when we speak about the obligations of ICANN. With respect to the budgeting process in ICANN: ALAC should be involved in the budgeting process in ICANN and also the Operating Plan. This is how we can ensure that our needs are met – it isn’t enough to just provide budget input, but also operating plan input, to ensure that input from a worldwide community was a part of the objectives for the year.
The Secretariat noted its support for the statement and the factual basis of it. The intersection between those statements and Carlos’ intervention is that there is a relation between them in that we need to ensure that our ALAC committee is fully-informed about the needs of the RALOs. They have requested comments on the Budget and Operating Plan and the Secretariat had made comments on this subject. Please ensure that you comment.
C Aguirre added that multilanguage support was essential to input. In the last few months ICANN has taken into account the importance of the end users of the Internet: the At-Large community and ALAC. In the reviews that are being made of ALAC and the GNSO it is very clearly underlined that the non-commercial users’ involvement is essential. That participation will be impossible without multilingual support. Documents must not be only in English.
S Ricciardi noted that he did not believe that there was a conflict between his statement and C Aguirre’s intervention.
The Staff noted that there was an upcoming survey on multilingualism and it hoped that everyone on the call would participate in it. There was also an issue with respect to 30-day public comment windows being too short to allow the community policy-making process to work and at the same time to translate documents during that process.
At-Large Summit
The Secretariat introduced the issue briefly with a short summary of the proposed summit. It is now suggested to hold the summit at the African meeting. C Aguirre noted that he was a part of the working group of the Summit. M Altamira and S Leite are also participating. He is working on providing some spanish-language information on the Summit for LACRALO.
The Secretariat noted that he hoped there was unanimous support for the Summit. There was no objection to this.
The Staff noted that there would shortly be a multilingual survey about the summit that all ALSes will, it is hoped, fill out to help the summit planning effort.
ALAC Workplan
The Secretariat noted that it was important that the ALAC workplan should incorporate LACRALO’s priorities. He asked if there was support for IDNs as a policy priority. He noted that there were language communities in the region that were not Latin-character-based like English and Spanish. He asked if the region supported asking ALAC to ensure that representations on IDNs include the situation of non-Latin script languages in the LAC region.
After a discussion of the various aspects of this question there was no objection to this suggestion.
In closing the Secretariat noted that this was just one item on the workplan. He asked if Members could please review the proposals and put their views forward so that the region could discuss them and the ALAC members could take the views of the region to their ALAC colleagues.
C Aguirre noted that there were so many issues on the list that all of them could not be dealt with at once. The Secretariat suggested that the list could be discussed one at a time after some idea of the priorities had been looked int.
Any Other Business
The Secretariat asked if there was any other business. There being none, he raised one issue, suggesting that the core part of the draft Accountability Framework the ALAC was considering would be useful for LACRALO. He had asked the staff to arrange for a translation so that the region could consider this text as the basis for working on a finalised text in the course of time. M Altamira noted that he thought this was a good way to proceed.
A Basilio suggested that we could create some working groups to discuss some of these subjects. We could then develop LACRALO positions for us all to think about these subjects. He noted that he would put forward an email to the list on these subjects. The Secretariat noted that existing worldwide working groups did exist and encouraged LAC members to participate in them. The Staff noted that it would ensure interpretation working group teleconferences would be provided if it was needed.
There being no other business the meeting was adjourned at 15:10 UTC.
