Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, well I think we should now start the call, start the conference, at 16 minutes past the hour. Hello everyone and thanks for joining this call. My name is Dev Anand Teelucksingh, I’m currently serving as the Secretariat for LACRALO and for those who don’t know I’m from Trinidad and Tobago from the Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society. Let’s just do a roll call.
I see we have Cintra Sooknanan, also from the Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society. Jean Marie Altema from Haiti, who is on his way to creating an At-Large structure, am I correct Jean Marie?
Jean Marie Altema: Yeah, sure.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, great. Jean Marie [Ackbarali], from ICTS and also from Trinidad and Tobago. Roosevelt King from Barbados, who is from [Bango]. Also Olivier Leblond, who is the current ALAC Chair and who is up very early in the morning, I’m very impressed, and thanks Olivier for joining the call. And also on the call is Heidi Ullrich from ICANN, the AT-Large staff Director. So, what we want to talk about in this call, you can see the agenda in the chat room here, is to discuss the At-Large structure participation in LACRALO.
Currently the agenda is in English, it’s in the upper right hand side. So, item number two – current ALS participation in LACRALO. Right now we have like 36 At-Large structures in the Latin American and Caribbean region. And from the Caribbean we have two from Trinidad and Tobago, three At-Large structures in Barbados, and three At-Large structures in Jamaica, and one At-Large structure in Guyana.
Yet, what I’ve noticed is that there’s been not that much participation active on the mailing list and so forth, other than from I would say about four of those ALS’s. And at this conference call is really just to hear from you directly as to what are the obstacles to this? I mean all of you are subscribed to the mailing list, to the LACRALO discussion mailing list, and you see the announcements, you are aware of things that are happening, but what are the difficulties for you to get involved and what barriers can we look to lower so that you can get involved? I will open the floor to anybody. Anybody wishes to go first? Go ahead, Roosevelt.
Roosevelt King: I’m going to start calling in.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: No, well you can also use the chat room to raise your hand. If you look at the upper, at the top of the screen there, there’s a symbol for raising your hand. So you can…so all of you can do that, but since you started to speak, go ahead Roosevelt.
Roosevelt King: Well for us, it’s really heavy demand in terms of monitoring the feeds, the groups that come. That is really the only problem. (interference) for somebody in my (interference) technical…
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Roosevelt, sorry to interrupt, but you’re kind of breaking up during your comments there. Could you speak again, just a little slower?
Roosevelt King: I’m not sure why I’m breaking up.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, well that sounds a little better now.
Roosevelt King: Okay, well I was saying is that part of our problem is with us over here is a lot of hands. Most of our hands are quite busy and for me, I try to do all I can, but trying to monitor it all is quiet a task. And the other part of it is the language.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, when you say language, you mean like the technical language.
Roosevelt King: Right, right. So that’s really our biggest thing. When I say language I am talking about technical language, right, yeah.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, well for ALS’s in Latin America, which predominantly speak Spanish and Portuguese, language has a different connotation. Cintra, I see your hand is raised, go ahead.
Cintra Sooknanan: Yeah I just want to continue from Roosevelt’s point. Yes, it is technical, a lot of it, and also I want to extend in terms of language because the translation is so poor on the mailing list, it’s difficult to follow what is being said by Latin America ALS’s. And for me, since I have to subscribe to both lists and when I don’t understand the translation in English, I tend to have to try to translate it otherwise and a lot of times as well I figure they as well may not understand what I’m saying if the translation is so bad on my end. So I try to post in Spanish as well, which I think is just tedious in terms of participating and also I think it defeats the purpose. I know in Cartagena there was some discussions about new translation software being integrated. I don’t know how far we’ve gotten to in terms of that or…
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Well, if Heidi is still on the call she could probably give an update to that. I believe that the work is ongoing on that and towards the end of this month we’ll see, we’ll be beta testing something. I don’t know if it will be a beta test to everybody on the list, but it will be at least to both the Chair and Secretariat. To at least try it out and make sure it works and get through any teething problems, as they say. And then deploy it for the list for wider testing. So hopefully, the translation, regarding that, hopefully that issue of the poor translation, which I think everybody agrees is a problem, will be sorted out soon. And I’m seeing Heidi raising her hand and then I see Olivier. So go ahead, Heidi.
Heidi Ullrich: Thank you Dev. Yes, we’ve been monitoring the development of this new translation tool with IT. They are in their final stages of developing this and we’re going to be having some internal calls in the next week and then we’ll send that out for testing. If, depending on how accurate or how this new system meets your needs, then we will need to seek other means as well. So we’ll be working with Christina Rodriguez who is our language services manager on ensuring that we eventually, as soon as possible, get the best system for translating these lists that we can offer you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Thanks, Heidi. I see Olivier, go ahead.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thanks, Dev. I just wanted to comment that I’ve actually been following the LACRALO list, the English one, I don’t speak Spanish so I’ve had to follow the English one and I do agree that the translation is sometimes bordering on the funny. It’s extremely hard to understand what is going on sometimes and you think wow okay. And I find it positively funny in that I do find some things which I have said in English and which someone has transcribed in Spanish and then it gets translated automatically to English and it doesn’t sound at all like anything I’ve said before. I’m thinking wow, wicked. I just thought I’d mention that. So we’re well aware of that problem and I really hope that this new software will do, will be an improvement. Thanks.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Yeah and I saw that Roosevelt in the chat also agreed with you Cintra about that regarding the translation software. You still have your hand up Cintra, did you have anything else to add or?
Cintra Sooknanan: No.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay. Well Roosevelt…
Roosevelt King: Well you know Dev, did you get any response from James…
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Oh, to join the call? I believe I think that we tried to call them up and they didn’t respond.
Roosevelt King: I see. So if these are the fellows who already have the knowledge and the technology and you see what I’m saying – they are not available. So you understand what I’m saying.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Yes, well it is a capacity issue in addition to the volume of information the accessibility of the information, translation on the mailing list for dialogue and a capacity issue. I will see Cintra, go ahead first and then Olivier.
Cintra Sooknanan: Okay, I don’t think we should limit our contribution just so you know who we think is better suited to contribute. I think a lot of the issues, yes it’s technical in nature, but you have to start somewhere. And Cartagena was actually my first meeting and it was amazing. And not because I knew everything, but because I knew nothing and it was a good first step for me.
And I think, I really think we shouldn’t feel that because we don’t know enough, that that should hinder us from participating. And it’s at the point now where I’m trying to join working groups but in the middle of it, and it’s a little bit embarrassing coming in not knowing anything when it’s, you know, the working groups are in midstream. But you have to start somewhere.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Yeah, I agree with you, Cintra. I’ll respond to that after. Olivier, I see your hand up, go ahead.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Dev. Again, I totally agree with Roosevelt that the learning curve for getting involved is pretty steep because for one, there’s so many acronyms, there’s so many things taking place simultaneously, there’s so many, it’s just like a big waterfall and you’re trying to swim against it and there’s just so many thing arriving at the same time, very difficult to make sense of it all.
I must say having joined At-Large and then become involved in At-Large only as recently as June 2008, although I knew quite a lot about how ICANN worked before that because I was taking part into ICANN from the outside, as an outsider if you want. It’s only at that time that I started diving into it and thought my goodness how am I going to make sense of this whole thing.
Now this is something which we’ve recognized and I think that this year we’re going to spend some specific amount of time specifically with a chap called Scott Pinzon who is going to help us develop some material that will try to explain at least the basics of how things work. Certainly make some material that will be accessible and when someone asks a question, not actually sending them a 250-page document and say “Oh, the answer is somewhere in there” - that’s definitely not the way to do things.
So make something that is clearly understandable by every user and not only for people who are experts in the subject, but also for the layman and the layperson. And it takes time, we’re so few people, there’s so few resources, it will take time to develop all this, but that’s definitely something we’re doing this year. Thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Thanks, Olivier. And yeah, I think I will also be happy to work with Scott Pinzon because I think there are so many different ideas, we can try to use YouTube videos, that sort of thing, to like give some very easy to present, easily understandable material. I’m sorry, Heidi, go ahead.
Heidi Ullrich: Thank you, Dev. I just wanted to point out that we are making some progress, as Olivier mentioned. I’m just going to be placing the links to two documents that we, one was really recently published, it is the beginners guide to the DNS and that’s the first in a series of beginner’s guides that we’ve been working with Scott Pinzon, as Olivier mentioned. This whole idea came out from the At-Large community in terms of a need for a simple communication in terms of what ICANN does and how what ICANN is working benefits end users. And another document that I’ll put a lint in to is the non-lawyer’s guide to the RAA, which was produced last year, again at the request of At-Large as a way to introduce people to the RAA agreement. So I’ll put both of those…
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Did you say what the RAA is?
Heidi Ullrich: The RAA is the Registrar Accreditation Agreement, and that really is one of the main things that ICANN has, an agreement with registrars. I’ll put that link in as well so you can take a look at that.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: And registrars, just to further elaborate, registrars are the companies where you can reserve a domain name. Thanks Heidi. So there are some beginner’s guide materials, as Heidi pointed out, and she will be posting the links shortly on the chat there. So that’s probably one step forward. Well let me ask, well let me hear from the other persons on the call, Jean Marie? You’ve been to an ICANN meeting before so you have some more familiarity with this. What are your thoughts about getting internet end users participating in this process? Anything that comes to mind or…?
Jean Marie Altema: Can you repeat that again, I missed something?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Sure. I’m saying is there anything you wish to add regarding how end users can participate in ICANN.
Jean Marie Altema: Yeah, here in Haiti we have been working for a long time to see how we can get involved in that because in Haiti we have people that do not know about ICANN and what ICANN is. So at my first ICANN meeting I tried to create a group and we had our first meeting last October and we’re trying to get a new one in February, so I think that we have to find ways to, let’s say that we as ICANN members or people as fellow, because I have been two times fellow, I think that we have to get back to people to explain to end users and how they can get involved because the website is important, but it’s not as.
I think that as people who know about ICANN, who have attended a lot meetings we have to share knowledge with people and to meet them or not. So I think that we have to get involved because each time I go to an ICANN meeting then it’s just like, there is a lot of things to do because when you see people engaging and involving in their community that means that they make effort to realize that. So I think the good media is for people who are attending an ICANN meeting or an ICANN community to get back to people to explain to people how they can first organize themselves and how they can get involved in ICANN.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, do you think there’s any…actually sorry, I saw Heidi’s hand going up. Heidi, go ahead and then Cintra.
Heidi Ullrich: Sorry that was from last time, sorry Dev.
Cintra Sooknanan: I just wanted to say I echo what Jean Marie was saying. I did speak to Damien, who I think is also from ITCS, and he told me briefly on the phone that one of his main barriers for participation was that he didn’t know how to participate. So I don’t know if there’s been any document that’s been printed as to how to join working groups - how if it’s that we’re just expected to participate on the mailing list. So how can we really get involved?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, well one of the things I was trying to do, and I tried to start this yesterday, is to try to explain different concepts like Adobe chat room and this is what you do and this is what you need to connect into it and also how to join a conference call. That’s what is that first email went out to, and I’m glad to see that persons that were able to connect who have never actually done a call like this before so. I guess that’s one of the things that should be put on the confluence wiki, on the LACRALO page, is how to participate properly and so forth. So I’ll be working on developing that to do so. Heidi, I see you have your hand up.
Heidi Ullrich: Uh yes, thank you Dev. Just a quick response to Cintra’s comments. We are developing some starter kits and I’m just asking Scott to actually our instant messaging, when we can expect that, but again there are going to be two starter kits. One is specifically for new At-Large structures and then the other one will be a more broad starter kit for others who are interested in joining ICANN in general. So I’ll put some additional information in the Adobe connect chat in just a moment.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, that’s good to hear, Heidi. I see Olivier, I see your hand is up, go ahead.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Dev. One question which I have heard, not only during this call, but in previous calls with other regions is the one where someone says well you know I haven’t got very much time on my hands actually and this seems to be taking so much time, but at the same time I would like to be able to get involved. So I’d like to be able to do something in there.
And one suggestion that I do make sometimes and that I might make now in fact as well, is perhaps to get involved with a working group, but some working groups require a lot of presence and perhaps a lot of work, but others are a little bit more, I wouldn’t say laid back because there’s no such thing as a laid back working group, but do involve less involvement. Maybe a call every couple of weeks, maybe a few emails in between and that really is a good start to actually get to be involved in a process as such, so you start feeling as though you’re part of the whole bottom up decision process.
You are conveying the view of your community. You are, you have a decent input into the whole system. And one thing I was going to suggest actually is, with all of these new starter kits that are coming out, whether it might be worth having some people in each region volunteer to basically have a read through these starter kits and then say what’s basically tell us if they think that it’s something that is helpful or if it’s not helpful. I mean that’s one way to get involved is to give feedback, particularly important.
Most of these kits are being developed by volunteers with staff, working with ICANN staff and we’re never short of work. So obviously the more volunteers the better it is, even if it’s just reviewing things. Just a suggestion. Thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Thanks Olivier. Actually that’s a very good idea. That could be a way to review all the materials that are published, like the beginners guide, the non-lawyer’s guide to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement, perhaps work on the review of those documents and see, ask questions or follow up questions, or say this part wasn’t clear or this was clear. I think that’s actually a good idea. I don’t know if anybody else has an opinion or not. Regards to the joining the working groups, I think that is also a very good idea because I kind of made the point for, I don’t know Olivier, if you think the At-Large improvements working groups are a good introduction to working groups because…
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Very much so and some of them are a bit more technical than others, but certainly it’s certainly interesting because you start understanding how the process of constant improvement takes place and what the recommendations are and really it’s important because it really is the regions that have to define where At-Large is going to go in the future. I don’t think it’s a case of ICANN telling At-Large what to do, it’s At-Large deciding for itself, so the improvements are definitely a key part of At-Large’s future.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Just to elaborate about the At-Large improvements – there was a review done on the At-Large and the At-Large advisory committee and what was decided was to divide those recommendations, a few of the recommendations were made and there are four Work Teams working on these recommendations. So if you go the At-Large improvements workspace, you can see the background behind it as well as the previous Work Teams, as to what they are trying to do.
So actually I would think if you just wanted to attend one of these conference calls, and it works the same way as this conference call is tonight, so I encourage somebody if you just wanted to attend a call, just do so and just listen in on the conversation. And you pick up things because I will say that you have to, as I say, you have to step into the water, but to actually learn how to swim. Because I mean I can related that as personal experience because coming into this I didn’t really understand or knew anything about the ICANN or anything about these things, it was only by joining the working groups, hearing people talk, then ask questions and then you gradually start okay, I begin to understand more and more.
Olivier, I see your hand is still up. Is that a response or…?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes Dev, I just wanted to add one thing. I keep on realizing we mention joining the working groups and sometimes that a big barrier to entry. It’s like a case of I don’t want to join before I know what it’s all about and I don’t want to suddenly be kidnapped by these people and never let go of. So maybe the first thing, as you say, is to maybe just go on a call and listen. You’re not going to be eaten by anyone. That’s the way I started. I started going on a few calls, and initially I didn’t say anything and started thinking, hang on I can contribute to this. And then said a few words and found out the people appreciated what I was saying, at least that’s what they told me, and it just went from there. That’s all. Thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Great. Okay, any further thoughts? Roosevelt, good, go ahead.
Roosevelt King: Well I’m kind of the opposite of Olivier. I started off following and then got lost along the way. So it was, I think it would definitely be an overwhelming amount of traffic that got me kind of stuck. And then I wasn’t able to follow it after that. But in terms of, I think there are two things – number one, there must be some kind of training. I mean listening, I can’t remember who it was who was talking about joining working groups and translations and stuff like that, is there a way that outside of the email list that we can have some kind of newsletter or something that people may better be able to follow without a lot of the jargon and the acronyms and stuff like that.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, so you’re saying more like announcements, if I may.
Roosevelt King: Yes or notices or I think it’s more like a reading, to be able to understand outside of the use of the technical jargon what is going on.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, well I would say yes there is an ALAC announce list, but an At-Large announce list, I wonder?
Roosevelt King: This is not, I’m not sure if you’re talking about an announce list at all. I think I’m more talking about a summary or an explanation of what is happening in the month’s time. A lot of end users are not familiar with the language or the jargon if you see what I’m saying. I’m sure you can get around the jargon by being able to explain it in layman’s terms.
Now the other problem is that even though I may understand, I may have a little problem getting it over to others. And it is extra work, if I don’t have something I can send them I would have to write it and send it to them, maybe in the inbox so they could see what’s going on. Or what would save me that trouble is being able to get something from ICANN that explains it, that I could then pass on to the others, without the jargon and stuff like that because they’re not going to understand the jargon. And if we talking about end users, it cannot be such a highly skilled, it cannot require that kind of high skill to be able to participate. I have no less than about 25 persons to monitor the list and it boils down to…
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Continue Roosevelt. That was Jean Marie leaving the call.
Roosevelt King: So what I’m saying is that we need to be able to get through to the end user, even from my stand point that I may be able to understand and make a decision or choose an option, but who’s to say that the option that I’m choosing is the option that everybody would choose. But if they don’t understand the language or the jargon then they will not even understand what the options are.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay. Well I see Heidi had her hand up. Heidi, do you wish to, go ahead?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes. Roosevelt, I’m with you because I’m essentially a non-techy and here I support the entire At-Large community. And we also have a mention, we have Scot Pinzon, who is our Senior Director for Marketing and Outreach in the Communications Department, prior to that he was in the Policy Department where he really instilled in all of the policy staff on how to write in very clear terms all of the policy work, the process work that we’re all working on with our communities.
So you will notice that in the monthly policy update, which I’ve put a link to that page in the chat room, that is again, covers all the various policy committees – the advisory committees and the supporting organizations in very clear language what is going on in those committees. That is translated in I believe at least the five UN languages; so that would be Spanish, French, English, Arabic, Chinese and Russian.
So that’s a very good place to start for everyone, every month. So if you would like, what I could do is we could send that out when it’s published every month so we could be a bit more proactive in getting it to the regions, if that’s something that you would like staff to so.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Is this the policy update newsletter that you’re referring to? That’s the same one right?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, it’s the policy update. Again, the advantage to that is that A- it’s in very simple language, as non-technical as possible and secondly it covers all of the policy supporting organizations and advisory committees. So you get a much bigger picture of what not only At-Large is working on, but also the GNSO, ccNSO, etc.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay. Olivier, I see you have your hand up, go ahead.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Dev. Having, well back in Cartagena, having woken up generally at about 5:30 in the morning daily, we managed to get a meeting with Scott at 10:00 pm. Evan Leibovitch and I went over to meet up with him and we remained at the bar, and I must say that we had a couple of alcoholic drinks, but a number of non-alcoholic drinks as well, and we remained with him for quite a few hours until I think about 1:00 or 1:30 in the morning discussing this.
So along with a number of other things, which Heidi mentioned earlier, there was also an idea of certainly making this policy update a lot more At-Large centric. One thing that Scott has told us was when he was looking through the At-Large website he could see the At-Large came up with 37 statements from ALAC and all sorts of very technically minded documents and things which he didn’t understand much about or which anyone wouldn’t understand much about. And he thought hang on, we really need to rewrite this whole website and rewrite these things so as to make them exciting, interesting, and certainly make it relate to users.
And so we really have decided now that there will be a big amount of work done on that and in fact, I’m even thinking at the moment that in order to write this work, in order to develop it we might need the involvement of people who do not have their minds as polluted as ours where we think something, we can take something for granted, an acronym for granted and someone else will just think hang on I can’t understand a word of what you’re saying, please say this in plain English. So we need people who speak plain English and not ICANNese. Thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Yes you’re right. ICANNese can be its own language there. It’s kind of a culture shock when I attended the first ICANN meeting, but yeah I agree definitely. And I think, yes, you have some support there, Olivier, from Cintra. So yes definitely, because I ultimately have to explain it’s not just about there’s policy also come, but you have to say why. I think the thing is you have to give a little background to say why you should care because this affects you. This affects you directly when you buy a domain name or how you use the internet. That type of explanation.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: If I can add to this, a couple of things, when one looks at the At-Large website, one sees X number of At-Large structures, X number of countries, etc., these are just members and so on. One of the things which we thought would perhaps it would be interesting for At-Large structures to be able to feature every month. You’d have one or two or three At-Large structures being featured – saying what do they do, why do they get involved with At-Large, what’s their interest, what would they like to bring forward into ICANN, what competencies could they bring and bring their point of view basically.
That was one of the ideas: in plain English, so basically, written by the At-Large structures, input from the At-Large structures on the At-Large website. This sort of stuff, like a newsletter, magazine, web magazine, podcasts maybe a podcast from an At-Large structure, an interview of someone in an At-Large structure, I don’t know, whichever. It’s still very open at the moment and I’ve found Scott to be particularly open to suggestions, so if you do have a suggestion, then this is what we’re doing at the moment, it’s really great. Be assured they’re going to be taken into account. Thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Excellent. Well actually because I was also thinking regarding, well we have to submit several project activities in the (inaudible 0:41:26) for ICANN’s operational plan. So I’m wondering if some sort of educational, some sort of project that could cover some sort of educational aspect, whatever could be done. So I think…
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Can I add to it? Just a few days ago, we submitted our comments into the draft strategic plan for ICANN. Strategic plan being I think 2011 to 2014. So we took the input from all the regions, unfortunately we had very little time to do all this, is was done a little bit in a rush, but tried to put it all together, collate it together and one of the suggestions that was in the ALAC statement was for some resources to be, well some funding to be released for At-Large to be able to conduct some classes, a little bit like capacity building, if you want, with local communities with either already established programs of internet governance or with a new program of internet governance with regards to ICANN in general.
So all of that is under study and hopefully that suggestion will be heard by the Board. And hopefully we can start developing this as well. Thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Yeah, okay Olivier, I agree. So okay, so we’ve kind of covered about, it’s now the top of the hour, we have about 30 minutes again. So we have discussed some of the information needed by At-Large structures and its members to better participate in LACRALO. Touching on what Olivier said regarding outreach calls, Roosevelt, Cintra what do you all think of that? Do you think that if you were to have like several briefing calls on education, educating, would that be useful? And it would be something similar to this where you have this Adobe connect chat room, a presentation shown, and it could be played back at a later time so you could take it to your members. Would that be useful?
Male: This may be something useful, but for example, our (inaudible 0:44:15) survey members, they’re not just solely me that’s representing; or furthermore for secession planning, where let’s say there’s an election and new members are elected to the Council, somebody (inaudible 0:44:27) for example, and they wanted to know how do they now keep the contact (traffic sounds).
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: I didn’t quite catch the last part of that message, there was some large vehicle passing by. What was that, (0:44:43), the last part?
Male: Just the continuing on the secession planning.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Secession planning, okay.
Male: So obviously you can play it later if possible and get information on how to participate in this for other persons to participate for example on the council or in another ALS, you know?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Well, one of the things that I’ve been trying, I would say for the outreach materials is, have it available offline because not everybody has broadband. I mean in Trinidad we’ve only now recently gotten broadband to really make it easy to participate, but there’s a lot of places, well globally as well, but in the Caribbean where everybody doesn’t have broadband access.
So even if you wanted to take a presentation, is there a way you can simply download it and give it to a person on a flash drive when they meet, to say “Look, here’s this meeting, this conference on IPv6,” explain what IPv6 is about? I think that is also something that is very useful. So it’s not just putting it online, but being able, having it accessible in an offline way. Put it on a CD, give copies to people, members in your organization and say just put it in your computer at home. You don’t need internet access for this. You don’t need broadband access I should say.
Carlton Samuels: Internet Trinidad for sure, you know somebody in that culture, the degree of separation is like 1.7; you’re going to know somebody who has broadband at least and could pull down these videos. So there should be a strategy where you have these streaming videos, but also a download link to those videos if we want to do it in a format of a video or a presentation.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Yeah, so I think yeah. Let’s see maybe I should bring up the other discussion regarding item number four, which is the possible LACRALO bylaw modification to address participation. Well, the lack of participation by ALS’s is, it affects quorum for LACRALO to make decisions, binding decisions.
So, one of the bylaw modifications was looking at participation. Originally it was, when it was posted in August it was a look at the ALS’s that were inactive that were affecting quorum. Just before Cartagena several ALS’s, primarily from Latin America, raised that issue that ALS’s that the issue is not so much the quorum issue, but that ALS’s are not participating and they wanted to see ALS’s participating in LACRALO and not just being passive. So, some of the discussion has revolved around establishing criteria for measuring participation, and then if an ALS is not participating enough, then that ALS will be regarded as inactive and there will be certain consequences for that.
The ALS, by an ALS being inactive, they cannot affect quorum and possibly the ALS, those persons from that AT-Large organization will not be eligible – this had been proposed, this is not finalized in any way, still open for discussion – that representative will then not be eligible to be elected to represent LACRALO in ICANN. So that’s a general summary of what’s happening so far. So I see Roosevelt has raised his hand. Go ahead Roosevelt.
Roosevelt King: I think on the elections for example, since you’re not voting, we going to take away your vote. Democratically that is not correct what I would suggest is there has to be responsibility here, just as we take responsibility for example of government on education…
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: What’s that Roosevelt? Dot what?
Roosevelt King: There’s like a responsibility for example, you were talking about before the elections, I was talking about national elections. You know what I mean? What I’m saying is like saying to a voter because his own vote, we will take away your vote from you and you will not be eligible to become, to seek election to Parliament. I mean I think, am I breaking up…? In a case like that where you see there’s a lack of participation, I think any sensible government would try to motivate, teach the constituencies something about what is happening and I am not sure that I can agree with penalizing a structure because it’s not participating.
Given that we already know that there are problems with getting them to participate. They need to participate, so to penalize them because of not participating is really I think, a potential problem and also is a problem for me, I would say; and also as a policy the (inaudible 0:51:49) is on for example, to try to inform those who don’t know.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, I get, I understand what you’re saying. Anyone else want to make any comments? I see, well Cintra has put several comments, thank you Cintra, go ahead.
Cintra Sooknanan: Alright. Roosevelt, I just wanted to say that in Cartagena when this was being discussed it was the intention was that there are a lot of “dummy” ALS’s that exist that really don’t contribute to LACRALO and there’s a lot of stuff going on, as you well know. So at this point in time, it’s necessary that as a region we do maybe develop the work and get not just numbers, but get people who are serious about these issues.
And I understand your point about democracy and not penalizing, but also how do we encourage participation? How, I mean it’s unfortunate that you have to penalize or put the fear of losing a vote in order to get people to participate, but how else is it possible for ALS’s who may not, I mean we all have limited time, but how is it, how do we really put in a mechanism to ensure that everybody is really contributing? Because LACRALO is for all of us.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, Roosevelt, I see you’ve raised your hand, go ahead.
Roosevelt King: I hear Cintra, but of course she asks the pertinent question – how do you get people to participate? If you penalize them you have less participation. And I don’t think that is the outcome that you want, I may be wrong, but it would seem to me that the way to go would be to try to find a format that you could educate people that would allow them to understand better, some kind of format.
This is what I was talking about, like a summary, but it need not be a long summary, not necessarily dealing with all the technicalities. If anybody wants to know the technicalities, well then there should be someplace that they can go, but certainly for the average end user that don’t want the information, that don’t want the details, they just want to be able to understand in a clear way what is happening without the details.
Like for example, the light is burning – I don’t want to know about the filament, I don’t want to know about the electricity, I don’t want to know how you got it generated, the conductivity of the wires, no I don’t want it. I just want to be able to turn on the switch and get light. You understand what I’m saying? So I think that we need to be able to try to address the situation rather than employing a mechanism that would allow you to cop out. And then when you cop out like that and you shut off people by the rules, how do they enter again? Is there an entry point at some point in there or are they done forever? I’m sure that’s not what you want.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Alright, if I may respond. The concept that’s been floated is that if there’s been lack of participation by a certain criteria, typically for example, it’s been like for over a year, if you don’t hear anything from an At-Large structure it is absent from elections - that type of thing. Then they will be considered inactive. And once they’re inactive then they cannot be part of the, they won’t affect the quorum for votes, right. So then once they’re inactive, they can be in inactive status for even another year while attempts are made to get them to participate more and so forth. And if they participate then they’ll become active ALS’s again. Well, active ALS’s with full voting rights again.
Roosevelt King: What is the rationale behind saying that they cannot participate? Would it be that because they are not participating in a regular basis they wouldn’t be in a position to know what is going on and therefore it makes no sense having them? Is that the rationale?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Well, the original rationale from my perspective was that how - oh I see Cintra has raised her hand. Sorry about that Cintra. Go ahead. You may be muted. I’m not sure what’s happened there. *7 to un-mute.
Heidi Ullrich: Dev, this is Heidi. Let me find out what’s going on.
Cintra Sooknanan: Sorry about that. Yeah I think the very rationale is if you’re not at least following the issues on the mailing list or you’re not really involved in the topics, then how can you really direct a vote or vote as well?
Roosevelt King: What is the objective? Is the objective to hear from people who are end users or is the objective to hear from experts or something like that? What is the objective?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: I would say the objective would be for end users, this is Dev.
Roosevelt King: Well then that makes my point, Dev. I’m not sure if you agree with what I’m saying, but if the objective is to get input from the end users, well in no point in time should the end users be…
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Well it’s one of those catch-22’s, Roosevelt. I mean for example, at the conference call because there’s not enough ALS’s calling in and participating we don’t get quorum, so we can’t even vote easily on a motion to say we approve this comment or whatever. So that’s the problem.
Roosevelt King: But you can’t have a conference call, Dev, don’t get the quorum and then set another one knowing that in the other quorum you need to address the reason you dint get a quorum. And it comes down to what I’m saying because people are finding it difficult to follow; even the ones that try to follow. So if that is true, you need to be able to do something to decrypt or to translate or to convey in a much more simple term.
I mean if the jargon is what’s stopping people from understanding, I’m sure that people, I mean like for example, if you take out the jargon I’m sure that most people will understand because they understand function. If you understand what I’m, so it’s, I mean a person may not be participating but because he’s an end user, he has the experience of being an end user. There’s no way that he cannot participate. There’s no way that he wouldn’t understand the options for some as that understanding as within the realm of being understood by a layman or a layperson.
I could come to participate in a conference for example, and I may still be able to give a pertinent opinion too because I’m an end user and because I’m in front of this thing and I have the experience of that. But to say that I’m not comment don’t mean I do not understand when it gets there.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay. I hear what you’re saying…
Roosevelt King: But the only reason I am fighting that, Dev, is because I really need to be able to pass information on to the average user. I cannot tell you that I may not understand something but I cannot tell you good enough to articulate that to somebody else that really can understand because I may be missing a lot of details, understanding it, but missing a lot of details, which will allow me to explain to the average end user.
So I am saying that rather than going the road of modifying the bylaws, I’m saying that we need to go the road of packaging the information how you said, on CDs or whatever, that people can have access to. The other thing is maybe any modification of the law will take place and the onus will be on the At-Large structure to have meetings with end users.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Well, alright actually I just seen [Jesso] has something to say. Let me just give, [Jesso] please go ahead.
[Jesso]: Yeah, just wanted to respond to the last point. I think I understand what he’s saying and he could probably try to authorize my statement, is that you’re trying to convey values of what has been brought forward by At-Large and ICANN to end users to enable themselves to draw them to participate. And in doing that that way how will you grow an organization from being a small one with, as Dev said, not enough quorum to make a vote on a topic or if you want to make any changes, and I understand what he is saying from that example right there. Showing the value behind the participation - if that’s what he’s saying then I agree with it.
Roosevelt King: Definitely.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay. I’m sorry Cintra, you had your hand, when you say your hand is up is that from a previous chat or you wanted to say something more. Previous – okay. Well okay, I understand what you’re saying and I agree that going too far in trying to measure participation and maybe in some fora it would not be as incentive.
So it’s been trying to find that balance to, but I think the thing is though, we have to ultimately we will have to put something into look at ALS’s that are not responsive. And by that I mean, we’re talking about ALS’s that are not responding to emails, not posting on the mailing list and so forth. So originally that was the thinking regarding these bylaws. It’s only this recent thinking, just before Cartagena, that’s looking at participation that is something that’s important, that ALS’s that participate are, how should I put it, the ALS’s, I guess I don’t know how to phrase it.
And actually I’m just realizing the time here. So while I continue to think about it let me bring up item number five on the agenda, just bring this discussion up regarding regional balance of ALAC representatives. Okay, the concept of the regional balance is this – currently LACRALO has to elect two representatives to the ALAC. Currently the only requirements for these representatives is that they must be from different countries and not be from the same nationality and not the same At-Large structure.
Now during the, I don’t know if you recall the emails when the At-Large Director to the ICANN Board was being done and opinions was being solicited from the list as to which candidate should LACRALO support and why – there were two camps. There were two diverging sets of opinions. Many of the ALS’s from Latin America expressed a preference about one candidate and many of the ALS’s from the Caribbean expressed a preference for another candidate, but ultimately what happened was that the ALAC representatives who are currently from Latin America went with the opinions from the Latin American ALS’s and supported that candidate.
In addition, so the concept has been suggested by a few of the Caribbean ALS’s - and yes, this is just one example, but it’s the most prevalent example that’s closer to the four I think – is that well perhaps there should be a regional balance between the ALAC representatives. That you should have one ALAC representative come from the ALS from the Latin American region and one ALAC representative from and ALS from the Caribbean region. So what are your thoughts on that?
Roosevelt King: There are several ways that you can do it. They could be from population but in this case I suspect that you are approaching it from the point of diversity. Where you have Latin America as a region and the Caribbean as a region, that’s not a problem, but of course this is part of other discussion we were having earlier because if you don’t have the participation well then you will lack the input.
I think that maybe if, I mean sometimes, it’s always easy to change rules and to trade through conditions, but I think that at the bottom of it all is what is the objective? I think you need to be guided by what is the objective more so than to be able to conduct business because conducting business in a bad manner may be just as bad as not conducting it at all or, if you understand what I’m saying: if you don’t include the people who need to be included, but then what are you really doing. It turns out to be the same as having virtually no participation at all and therefore you must try to get that participation. I’m thinking that item five falls within the same discussion and needs the same solution.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, Cintra, you have your hand up, please go ahead.
Cintra Sooknanan: What I want to say with regards to this point is that not, I mean Caribbean ALS’s are always in the minority, it’s very difficult for a representative from the Caribbean to get voted into ALAC unless there’s some kind of agreement with Latin America ALS’s. So it’s not completely democratic to begin with. Secondly, I mean I understand the point that you’re making, Roosevelt, with regards to representation, not representation, you said representation is that what you were saying?
Roosevelt King: Participation. Oh you mean participation, sorry I’m not sure. I was talking about participation. It may be difficult for you to get the representatives even though it’s skewed, because you don’t have the amount of participation – it’s not like necessary the whole of Venezuela and the whole of Brazil participating in this thing, there’s probably a few people. But then we maybe be able to match those few people in the Caribbean if we could encourage the participation. And then there is no need to talk about it because that level, you may have the required amount of participation from each because the numbers are small for participation in comparison to the participation.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Well in terms of voting though, I mean currently there are only four Caribbean territories that have At-Large structures.
Roosevelt King: Wait how many votes does that represent?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, there are 15, the vote is split up among the total number of countries that have At-Large structures. So there are 15 countries that have At-Large structures in Latin America and the Caribbean, so, 15 countries out of 33. So that means that even with the four countries all voting, even if they were unanimous in voting, there’s I would say unless we have support from Latin America…
Roosevelt King: Understood.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Well, yeah. You can do the math.
Cintra Sooknanan: Sorry I don’t mean to cut you off. Its’ not just in terms of actually getting a position, it’s in terms of something as small as having our voice heard and having an opinion that is in consensus from the Caribbean end on the mailing list. Even if you don’t want to vote in that way, at least acknowledge it and say why you’re not voting, which was not done at all.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: I think that is also the big catalyst is that ultimately, even though there is strong opinion expressed for one candidate over the other, there was a unanimous vote from LACRALO for the one position. And maybe that should not have been the case to me- And even if you disagree with, I mean I think it’s okay; I don’t think we want it to be just a blind, “Well do as we say,” but say why you disagree with our opinions but at least you know that they were taken into account.
But I think at the end of that process it was like after they, points were made, which was reasons, there wasn’t just yes or no – it was points were put forward and it was, it just did not seem to have been taking into account. Olivier, and I see Cintra agreeing with that. Olivier, go ahead.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Dev. And perhaps I can also bring a bit of feedback on how it happened in EURALO. We had a vote with all of the At-Large structures voting and it was also a very, very close vote, but the interesting thing is because we had a vote which was very narrow with the amount of time that we had, so very short, sorry, with the amount of time that we had, in order to get an answer our Chair, Wolf Ludwig, ended up having to call each and every At-Large structure out there and it’s interesting in that he emailed them first and the remaining ones who did not reply from his private email, he actually called to try and get them to read their email.
And ultimately we ended up with, I think out of 25 structures we ended up with 23 votes. The lost At-Large structures being, I think I can say now, certified disappeared somehow. But it is interesting how if you do come after people and you call and you say look this is really important, there will be a response, it just is down to the size of the response. So you might wish to consider this during the next elections. I know that it’s a little bit more complicated in the Caribbean region, but it’s something which I’m sure EURALO is going to relate on with the follow up to the elections, or to the selection process which the At-Large Bard selection design team is currently working on so as to have lessons back for the future. Thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Yeah, for that process. Well yeah because the timeline for that was just so rushed to really have a proper understanding of it for the At-Large structures at think. But yeah, that’s a separate topic. Thanks, Olivier. But I think the difficulty is, is that when one representatives from the Caribbean went up for a position, ultimately the voting was basically I guess we could say basically the Latin Americans voted for the Latin American candidate with probably one or two exceptions.
And persons from the Caribbean voted for the Caribbean representative, but there is no, I mean right now there is no way for any Caribbean representation to really get on, be it any of the representatives without really getting substantial support from Latin America. But I don’t know if that’s…
Roosevelt King: Well if that is the case, I will agree that we then have to talk about the representation because if the objective is to hear from both regions, well then both regions should have representation. So it would be to let the Caribbean vote for their representative and the Latin American vote for their representatives and that the representatives are not voted for by all 15.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Oh well actually for the election for positions actually there was a very high turnout. I think it was like 29 At-Large structures actually participated in the vote actually. So it was a very high turnout. I was surprised at the turnout. So I suppose, and it was a kind of calling people, reminding people, say please, get involved and I think, you must have seen the email and had the conference call with the candidates and stuff and that went very well. Cintra you were going to say something, I’m sorry.
Cintra Sooknanan: I would like to raise one other point, and that is as well with this motion, right - it’s not just about having (inaudible 1:20:09) but also ensuring that LACRALO is able to, that our representatives are able to represent us at the ALAC. Quite a few of our Latin American counterparts, they don’t speak English, so it’s difficult for them to respond to ICANN calls and that kind of thing.
And I really feel that the Caribbean can help in that regard. If it’s not to represent then it’s something we should try to help them out as much as we can because our English is strong. Our English is quite stronger you know and you need language. And I know like Serg, Sergio needs our help and at this point in time I really feel that if there’s a Latin American representative it has to be somebody who is strong in English. At least, not just for themselves, but also to help the others who don’t understand. And similarly for us, we have to help them along because it’s technical, one and it’s in a different language and it’s hard, it’s hard to do it.
Roosevelt King: Have we ever had any representation from the Caribbean?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Yes in the very beginning. When the LACRALO was first formed in 2006 the Secretariat was Carlton Samuels, who I’m sure you know. And he served until 2009. Currently Carlton is on the ALAC committee but via nom com, the nominating committee, which is a committee that’s tasked with finding candidates from all the different regions for all the various supporting organizations in ICANN as well as the ICANN Board.
So he’s still, in a way he’s independent from LACRALO. He’s still an ALAC, but he is independent form LACRALO in the sense that we can’t ask him to, I mean I won’t say we can’t ask him, but we can’t direct him if we wanted to. Okay, now there’s one, because there’s a lot of Caribbean territories that don’t have At-Large structures, if we get more At-Large structures in the Caribbean I think this will also go a long way, but that will take time to get At-Large structures started and then accredited and so forth.
But that will ultimately be a way for, obviously a good way forward because there’s like a lot of territories in the Caribbean for expansion. There’s a map of the Caribbean I posted in the chart there. That shows the countries in yellow, those are countries where At-Large structures can form and be part of LACRALO. And Heidi has posted the old chart which explains the idea behind the nom com appointees and so forth. Thanks Heidi. Okay, so we are now coming up to the 90 minutes, so I think we may have to start putting an end to this meeting. Does anyone want to talk about any next steps? Or any suggestions for that?
Oh I see Roosevelt has got cut off. Well Cintra, your hand is still raised, you have something to say? Okay, no. Very well. Well, I have to say this was a very useful conversation. It’s good to actually talk to ALS’s, persons that normally aren’t really active that I don’t really hear from in the ICANN process and it’s good that you all decided to come on. And I think moving forward we will take some of these suggestions into account and try to really get your participation in ICANN and in LACRALO.
So I will be in touch with all of you. Again trying to point out all resources and possibly coming up with ideas for briefing conference calls, I want to hear some feedback on that. So does anybody have any final comments? Okay, thanks for Chairing. And Olivier, please go ahead.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Dev. I was just beaten to the cord, thanks for Chairing – that’s what I was going to say to you. Thanks for Chairing this. It’s very interesting to see the problematic in each region and rest assured you are not the only region with this type of question and challenge. So obviously there is something that we can all learn from and hopefully we can all find solutions to this together. Thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, thanks Olivier. Okay, well thanks, Cintra and Roosevelt, and Heidi, thanks so much for attending the call. And I will call this meeting adjourned and look forward to seeing all of you on a future conference call. That’s all.
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