1. Election Planning
Evan’s and Darlene’s terms are for one year. Formal procedures to accept nominations and for voting procedures need to be adopted. Frederic will be in charge of this and should have this ready by the end of the week. Each ALS gets two votes and so do the unaffiliated individuals.
2. Paris Briefings
Some briefings have been posted already (Evan’s and Wendy’s) and those can be read.
Alan will be giving his verbally: As ICANN meetings go, this was incredibly busy and moderately productive. Decisions were made and things seemed to be moving. There was a decision on gTLDs, the Summit and on Domain Tasting. Things were not always decided as we might have wished but things were definitely moved forward. The time was really crunched so ALAC and the Liaisons were really run off of their feet. There were also more meetings that are cross-constituency that added more hours to the schedule. Feelings on ALAC: they still are not making any policy decisions, even those that were scheduled.
Wendy found it really helpful when people posted policy statements that she could use but we need to do more.
Darlene also found this to be an extremely busy meeting and is disturbed by the lack of ALAC movement on any post-Paris policy matters.
Evan found it to be a good bonding experience between the NARALO and the EURALO. Things were able to be agreed upon and joint statements made. The joint sessions with SSAC, NCUC and GAC were good to put faces to names and to be able to improve our work with these ones. This meeting was extremely compressed with very little time to chat in the hallways. We have also started to turn the corner in being able to make policy statements.
Alan: We need to start making conscious decisions on which policies we wish to weigh in on and which we do not. We are not doing this yet but need to.
3. Travel Policy
Soon we will only get half of the funding that ALAC needs and none for At Large as per what other groups get. We need to either complain and take action or try to figure out where the money comes from. This motion has been passed but is open for comment until the end of the Paris week. In the absence of comments, this will go through. Doug Brent instituted this so comments should go to him but also to the board. It doesn’t seem that ALAC has been doing anything on this yet. When Doug Brent put this forward, there was to be no funding for ALAC. It’s the Board that put ALAC back in. There was no public discussion on this and no opportunity to comment on this prior to the decision being made.
We need to get a NARALO working group together on this, at a minimum. Gareth and Darlene are willing to work on this and take the lead on this and to try to bring the rest of the group into this.
4. GNSO Improvements
They have had 4-5 meetings on this so far with another few to go. The positions that have been put on the table are (in part): parity between registries/registrars and the commercial/non-commercial people, the business constituency wants more seats, etc. The registrars with their weighted votes might lose half of their votes which would give more power to the business constituency. Who knows what will happen at this point? Game theory. If the committee cannot come to a consensus, the board will make the decision for them.
5. Public Participation
We have deadlines coming up on: updates to the RAA and Presidents public consultation on improving institutional confidence. These things are related to the JPA and to the travel policy. This may be a good opportunity to make our case known because of the lack of confidence in ICANN public participation. Evan will take the lead on this.
Alan is coming to the conclusion that the At-Large structure as it is organized makes it exceedingly difficult to partake in policy discussions. Unless we can identify people within the RALOs and ALSs who are versant in various policy areas, then we will be unable to do so effectively. We may never be able to succeed if we do not have these people. We cannot continue to try to dumb the issues down and then try to give policy direction that will be useful to ICANN.
Wendy thinks that there ARE some areas where the public may have input that we could do through polls and such.
Darlene mentioned that we also need accountability with our ALAC members. Who is doing what? Who is showing up to meetings? Who is actually shouldering the work load?
Frederic noted that of our 17 ALSs, only 7 replied to the Summit questionnaire and 5 to the Win-Win questionnaire. He NEEDS more input.
Also, he needs an up-to-date list of contacts for the ALSs.
6. RAA Update
We need more information on this and have requested an issues report from Frederic. Evan will request more information from Danny, as well.
7. Meeting adjourned - on time, again!
