Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. Well, let's start off with, I believe we have everyone. We've got a full ExCom and Evan for the first point on the agenda.
Evan Leibovitch: Do we have an agenda?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We do, indeed.
Evan Leibovitch: Oh, I see a link. Hold on. It wasn't on the ALAC calendar as of last night.
Alan Greenberg: It just happens to be incorrect.
Heidi Ullrich: It is?
Evan Leibovitch: You can't have everything.
Heidi Ullrich: What do you mean, it's incorrect?
Evan Leibovitch: Oh, sorry, the first one was item for review. Sorry. Sorry, Heidi. Okay, I backtrack, sorry. I missed that one. It's just, I'm seeing all the 1 and then 1, 2, and then 1, 2, and so on.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No, no. We stuck this in as a review item at the beginning.
Evan Leibovitch: Yes. Never mind.
Heidi Ullrich: Whew!
Evan Leibovitch: No, I got to Items for Discussion and didn't see it there.
Alan Greenberg: We have as many number ones as possible just to confuse the peasants.
Evan Leibovitch: It works.
Alan Greenberg: It does, indeed. I think we should number everything number one.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's how priorities tend to work in the ALAC.
Alan Greenberg: Well, then we'd never have to renumber anything.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: All right. Okay, so –
Alan Greenberg: Yes?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Have been discussing the white paper, shall we actually tell them? Have a good look at said document, and I must say, all of those edits sort of happened in the last few hours. I haven't looked at them.
Alan Greenberg: Nor have I. I looked at ones a few hours ago.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Evan has put in a heap of the reference points in the beginning, which is absolutely fantastic. Thank you very much, because we want to make clear, of course, Evan, which you've picked up on, is this is not just the first half of the discussion. We don't want this white paper to have – to elicit response to say, oh, and we're only hearing about it now. So, I think it's a very good principle to (inaudible). Evan the incorrect URL noted here. That's a staff issue. Can you just –
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. The way Wiki works, basically, the URL is whatever you call the pointer. And in this particular case, a pointer and therefore the Web page was simply called English as opposed to anything descriptive of it. And so there is one particular link which is the transcript of the December 7 meeting. I have marked it in read on the Wiki doc – on the Google doc, exactly where that is located. And so it's working as it is. We are pointing to the Wiki page/English, but I think in order to make it a little easier as we go forward, that that page perhaps ought to be renamed and we ought to change the link once that happens.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, thank you, Evan. Yeah, we actually tried to have a standard naming issue for all of our Wiki pages, so thank you for pointing that out. I'll change this immediately after the call.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. While we're at it, if that's the case, if you want to keep to the standard, the meeting information for the October 8 meeting doesn't have the date on it. It just says Community Call.
Heidi Ullrich: October 8, which call, sorry? I didn't –
Evan Leibovitch: The meeting information for the October 8 meeting.
Heidi Ullrich: Thank you.
Evan Leibovitch: And so if you're on the Wiki – if you're on the Google doc, it's basically one, two, three, four bullet points down, and it's the meeting information goes to – and the link is called Community Call, At-Large Director, whereas, the transcript says 08 October 2009 transcript, blah, blah, blah.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I see that.
Sebastien Bachollet: And to allow better following of the changes, we – after Alan make a lot of changes, I start to put in red all the question or new change like that. It's easier for the people who don't relate the last few hours to go through.
Evan Leibovitch: I've made explicitly to make all my comments in red. I’m not – the only changes I've made to the document that aren't in red are actually those bullet points at the top. Everything else I have not – any wording I have changed has gone in red.
Alan Greenberg: Good convention. Too bad we didn't establish it formally.
Evan Leibovitch: It seems like it's being commonly used. I'm seeing Cheryl and Sebastien do it.
Alan Greenberg: I've used it a few times for noncontroversial edits. I just made some changes, also.
Evan Leibovitch: Yep.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I must say I didn't make any color notes or CLO notes next to changing the very rare spelling error. Fulfill with two L's (inaudible). I just scratched out and did that, radical that I was.
Alan Greenberg: May I suggest that we look at this document now with the changes from something to the last copy? I don't know whether you want to include my changes, so we can discuss them now, or just take them –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I thought we were starting to go from the top looking at any changes or points, and I don't think that – it isn't the last copy. If you refresh in the last few seconds, it should be –
Alan Greenberg: Okay, but are just looking at the document or are we looking at the changes from some previous version?
Evan Leibovitch: Well, let's look at the current one, which as of right now is revision 483, and – no, I think if there is any relatively recent things to note, I know everything I've done has been in red. Most of what Cheryl and Sebastien has done in red. Why don't we just take it from where we are?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, take it from the top.
Alan Greenberg: Okay.
Evan Leibovitch: Oh, one thing while we're still on the thing of the meetings, Heidi. There is – the very bottom bullet point is the portal that exists for the issue. As I mentioned in red, it's got links to some but not all of the resources we've got above. So, you may just want to add them all.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay.
Evan Leibovitch: I mean, if that's the case, then we can take most of this away and just point to the portal.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I must say, Evan, I'm happy to have a little obvious overkill for those who are only going to take the time to scan through the white paper.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. All right. So, we make sure they know there has been plenty of discussion, plenty of public comment, and so on.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Absolutely, yes.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. So, really, we've done that top section, and that means, Alan, we're looking at – did you want to go back to the preamble, or can we now just go to the comparable processes, which I think is where the meat and potatoes start to become interesting?
Alan Greenberg: I'm happy with that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay.
Alan Greenberg: I mean, I haven't looked at all these links, but I don't think I want to take the time to do it right now, either.
Evan Leibovitch: You've probably seen them already.
Alan Greenberg: Yeah.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: For those of you who have little else to do in your lives, feel free to wander through that later. So, what we do need to realize, of course, is that once those changes in the actual links and naming of pages changes, some of this text comes out. But we can all agree that's just cosmetic. It's just removing editorial comments.
Alan Greenberg: Is the intention that these blue underline things be linked at some point?
Evan Leibovitch: They are.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: They already are.
Alan Greenberg: They are?
Evan Leibovitch: Put your mouse on it and click, it will say to go to link.
Alan Greenberg: Oh, even though it doesn't show up as a link. Got it, okay, fine.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, and when we export it to another form of document –
Alan Greenberg: It will become a link, got it.
Evan Leibovitch: And in case it was going to be printed, I put the explicit URL, but as long as it's going to be used on the Web, those links are live.
Alan Greenberg: Understand. Okay. Comparable processes, there have been no changes that are visible.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And I don't think anything is particularly contentious.
Alan Greenberg: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Methodology. Sorry about that, Evan.
Alan Greenberg: Is the intent – well, I didn't know if Evan wanted to admit to being part of this process or being able to criticize it afterwards.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We were giving you the option, perhaps, Evan, that you could then have plausible deniability.
Evan Leibovitch: Oh, no, I'll take responsibility where it's due.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Now, the only thing there is what we could in fact say is that the white paper is initially drafted by the subcommittee from the last Community call. That is what the minutes said we would do. It's by simple, I guess –
Alan Greenberg: I said I would draft it and Evan said he volunteered to work on it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, yeah. So, I think we can probably –
Evan Leibovitch: Guys, there's a smiley on there. If it's taken out, it doesn't matter.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It also means that without using the highly contentious term "Executive Committee" we're (inaudible) with what the agreement has been in all the calls it also goes through and tracks through, we can say appointed at the last, or ratified at the last –
Alan Greenberg: Okay. I just wasn't sure why Evan was included and no one else was, forgetting that he had volunteered.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It's anyone who said, yes, thank you, I'll do this as well.
Alan Greenberg: We can change those words.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you. So, that is pretty simple.
Alan Greenberg: Is there a highlighting capability in this?
Evan Leibovitch: You can bold, you can italic, or you can change to a different font.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. No, there is a highlight ISO. Let's highlight in yellow these things that need to be changed and so we don't spend time typing here.
Evan Leibovitch: Yeah.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay.
Alan Greenberg: And I've just done that.
Carlton Samuels: Okay, I would have to save to see it.
Alan Greenberg: When I was writing this, as I was writing it, it was unclear whether we were going to try to put the real timeline in here or this is the next subcommittee drafting team, whatever, design team that's going to do it. It just wasn't – I wasn't sure, so both options are included here, actually.
Evan Leibovitch: One thing occurred to me in terms of rather than do specific dates, the idea to sort of say, okay, T plus this, so we could give a general idea of how long the process is going to take without having, say, here's the starting point.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's what I said project plan, that's what I had in mind, instead of milestones. Now, the dates can stay in the table as start, and then –
Evan Leibovitch: Start plus two months, or whatever.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: S-plus, S-plus, S-plus, yes. And then they just get changed to real dates when you actually start.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And, Sebastien, yes, I do agree that in a perfect world it would be the task of the design team, but to be honest, we're looking at the design team, let's be honest. We might add one or two others, but –
Alan Greenberg: We is it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, the same people who tend to put their collars up and do the work are the ones that will be doing it again.
Alan Greenberg: If along the way someone can come up with different letters other than ABS for these two groups, we should do that. I don't want to spend time thinking about it now.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I've got a suggestion later on. I figured leaving ABST as it was, was easy, because I had more concern with confusion by using the term "work group" in a way that may confuse with other actions (inaudible) later.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. All right.
Sebastien Bachollet: One of the reasons of my question is to do we want to start the process, and one way to start the process is to be the AB. ASB – to start with the group we are here and add one or two or three people as soon as possible, like that, and start – we really want to start the process.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, in which case the very – I would suggest first or second – that's a moot point, but it's something that does need to be decided – in milestones would be call for –
Carlton Samuels: Membership.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: ABSCT membership. That's gone in as the first milestone as an example now and we can run it from there, although I suspect it should be the second thing.
Alan Greenberg: How does one get a refresh copy? Just refresh the screen?
Carlton Samuels: Just save.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Or save, yeah.
Evan Leibovitch: One thing that I just marked, we had something about the dates of SIC meetings, which struck me as something worthwhile to work around. Do we know when they are meeting? Like, if we can – sorry?
Alan Greenberg: : We asked, we didn't get an answer.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, this is Heidi. I asked Marco and the SIC meeting for January has not yet been confirmed, but I can again go back to him and ask him if there is an update. He is very aware of our need for these dates.
Alan Greenberg: Well, it's not only the January one. If there is going to be a decision in Nairobi by the board, there has to be a recommendation by the SIC in its meeting just prior to that. And so that meeting is also of critical importance.
Evan Leibovitch: Well, then, obviously one of our dates and milestones is the Nairobi meeting, which is somewhere in there.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think if we come back later and do that table, but I do think the table is a nice, easy way of doing it. The other thing I thought, too, is that if we get a couple of days ahead of this, we could actually influence the SIC meeting dates, if we're at a point where we could sneak out an early draft of this and say, "Well, Marco, here's our yet-to-be-published white paper. Look what would fit nicely for us here and here, and how about you get the SIC to meet then?"
Evan Leibovitch: By the way, I just wanted to make a small note. We're 26 minutes into the hour, you do have other things to do in this meeting. I didn't know how much time you were going to give this.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We do indeed know that.
Alan Greenberg: That's why I suggested we didn't try to do editing and details now, but identify things that need to be done.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We're just moving down to decision process. Nothing seems to be particularly contentious excepting that is one of those where we actually had some (inaudible) comparison versions with one you've taken off from Google, for example. If you've copied it into Word and you're doing a comparison of Word, there has been additions that aren't redded up here, but I don't think they are in any way contentious.
The only thing I have – is this an European versus an Australian thing? ISOC, should it be all capitalized, to my mind?
Evan Leibovitch: Yes. It is. It's an acronym.
Sebastien Bachollet: No, it's not. It really – it's not European, it's a French. When you write something that you can pronounce as a word, it's just the first letter in capital; when you can't pronounce, when you need to say the letters, that's all capitals. But that's French, and sorry about that.
Alan Greenberg: However, ISOC capitalizes it and therefore I believe that is what we should do, also.
Sebastien Bachollet: Yeah, but ISOC France doesn't because of the way we word, but it's a mistake on my side.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No, I don't think it's a mistake, it's just a language and naming convention, Sebastien, and it's something that I've seen over the years. It's just the first time I've thought, oh, I must ask while we've got everyone who might tell me here.
Sebastien Bachollet: For example, in French, you write IGF, it's in capital. If you write ICANN or ISOC, it's the first capital and that's it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: See.
Alan Greenberg: And partly it's a matter of choice.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And now I've learned my fact for today. Thank you for the factoid. So, that's been erased. To point one, use ICANN framework for comments. Indeed, we discussed that at great detail, but haven't put that in, yeah.
Alan Greenberg: Well, the real question, I think, is who are we asking, not the mechanism that we're using to ask them. And we do not have, for instance, the ICANN community in this list.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes. So, is this a matter of – should this list –
Carlton Samuels: But wouldn't you say publicly available Wiki is with the ability to readily comment as a way (inaudible) that down?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, although that could be implicitly indicating At-Large ones.
Carlton Samuels: Well, we have At-Large, specifically At-Large lists that are publicly available.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: At least it's different on Wiki.
Alan Greenberg: I mean, do we wish to have ICANN publish this on their For Comment list? I don't know what the process is for doing that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think we should.
Evan Leibovitch: I agree, too. They have a publicity method that they probably have certain ways to get the word out, and they probably have certain people and areas monitoring this area that immediately--
Alan Greenberg: Then let's list the second bullet as ICANN public comment process.
Carlton Samuels: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, excellent. And then publicly available Wiki. Fantastic. And, Heidi, we'll need some magic to happen back to us fairly fast to give us how we actually do that, to whom, and blah, blah, blah.
Alan Greenberg: Now, I note if they're gong to require that we have a 30-day comment period, we don't have that luxury. So, that may be a reason not to do it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We need to ask the question.
Heidi Ullrich: For the public comment period?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Correct. There are two things. There is the putting it into the public comment, ICANN public comment framework and process, and then must it be 30? My suggestion would be probably not.
Alan Greenberg: I'm just noting that we are on a rather tight timeline. And I would omit the comments about the mechanism by which we get comments back. The solicitation can specify send comments to, or whatever, in each case.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep.
Heidi Ullrich: On the At-Large list, would you like to specify worldwide as well as regional lists?
Carlton Samuels: Worldwide and regional. All of them, I would think.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Absolutely. And, actually, I would go further. Worldwide, regional and At-Large structure lists.
Evan Leibovitch: Well, we can control the lists over which we have purview or that we have permission to write in, which is the ICANN lists. We obviously want to get through the regions every ALS dissent back to their people.
Alan Greenberg: May I suggest, this document doesn't need to be more specific than what it says, but we should be starting to make a list of which At-Large lists are we talking about. In the past we've had a lot of confusion whether it is an announce list or whether it is the At-Large list, or whatever. So, I think we need to start writing that list now, and I would suggest it is a list called At-Large, a list called ALAC, and the lists called XXRALO are the ones that we are focusing on.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We still have to put out an announce, though.
Evan Leibovitch: But the announce would have to direct response to something else.
Alan Greenberg: Somewhere else.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And I don't have a problem with that. I really would like to have – because, remember, part of what every (inaudible) do is disseminate things we ask it to do. I think in addition to that we specify the At-Large structure list. Every one of them has list or communication method. Every one of them has something. Some of them have enormous networks, and it's about time we said do it. Otherwise, we're talking to the same 20 people that we get at the regional meetings.
Carlton Samuels: But I think most of us would have, including the members of ALAC, would have access to those lists, you see? So, they can be specific –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I disagree totally, because we have list managers in a number of the ISOC chapters and a number of the At-Large structures, at least in Asia Pacific, who are not subscribed to any of those lists.
Carlton Samuels: No, no. I'm speaking specifically at the At-Large, ALS lists, Cheryl. I wasn't speaking of the ISOC and the others.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I'm not speaking of the – I'm speaking of the At-Large list.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay, folks, I think –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Sorry. From a number of our ALS's, a number of them are ISOC chapters, right? Okay, that's where I made that statement.
Alan Greenberg: But we don't have access to the ALS lists. All we can do is send the note to the regional lists or the At-Large list and ask that they be further disseminated; is that correct?
Carlton Samuels: Yes. And my point was that one of us on ALAC always has that –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I'm going to speak over you. In the white paper it must state it's the expectation for it to be distributed to those lists.
Alan Greenberg: Fine.
Evan Leibovitch: Fine. That's a level of detail we probably shouldn't need to deal with right now.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, it's dealt with as far as I'm concerned. It happens that way, and in Asia Pacific it is essential.
Carlton Samuels: Yeah, I think (inaudible).
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And then no other comments that I can see, until we get right down into issues, correct? Evan, your comment there?
Evan Leibovitch: Which one? The one in – okay, on the issues, basically you're talking in that paragraph that it's important to note the process isn't designed to be long-term. We're going to try it, we're going to know there is going to be changes made. Do we want to make that iteration explicit in this document? Do we want to, in our list of milestones and things saying, okay, we have our list of milestones leading up to first election. Okay, after first election do we have an explicit set of – do we have an explicit review process in place after the first election?
Alan Greenberg: I would suggest that if we are going to take – if we explicitly decide to take shortcuts at saying this is not a long-term process but we believe it's safe to do it now, then there should be such a review. If we are not consciously doing that, then I think we leave the review based on perceptions of whether it is needed or not.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I'd like to weigh in with an opinion. I think a review is very good final milestone in this paper's listing, and it gives the design team something to have a more meaningful and closing relationship in.
Alan Greenberg: Accepted.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay.
Alan Greenberg: Term of appointment.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay, so I can take my comment out and – or should I just leave it there?
Alan Greenberg: Leave it there, and that's a reminder that we have to put that milestone in. Now, personally, I don't think we are going to take any shortcuts, because people are going to feel far more paranoid that we're not doing it well the first time than in the second time. But – okay, Term of Appointment. Any comments?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Now, not so much of a comment, but a question. The question for the terms, where it was quoting Carl and Tricia, are we happy to just make that statement or do we want to get their permission to do so, or is simply sending them a copy of this to see if we're quoting them properly enough? How do you want to deal with that?
Alan Greenberg: I know Carl said it; I'm pretty sure Tricia said it. It was in the meeting, the public meeting where they both participated. I would suggest that we may want to reference that meeting.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That would be good, yes.
Alan Greenberg: Carl, I know, used words like I was director for slightly under three years and I barely got the feel that by the time I ended. I believe Tricia also, however, supported the three years.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And from memory that was the meeting at Mexico on the Tuesday morning.
Alan Greenberg: No, this was the teleconference.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh, because I thought they said it on Tuesday morning.
Alan Greenberg: No, this was the teleconference. They may have said it then, too, but this was the teleconference when there was strong discussion on doing a one- or two-year term with Dev suggesting that we rotate regions.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. Well, in that case we definitely need to – oh, it was just Tricia.
Alan Greenberg: No, Carl was on that call, too.
Heidi Ullrich: I remember that was an AFRALO issue. I think Fatimata brought the issue up.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (Inaudible)
Evan Leibovitch: We could go through the transcript. I think that's the October 8th teleconference.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, I think so as well.
Alan Greenberg: And it's probably about two-thirds of the way through, but it should be easy to find a discussion on term length. I'll put in a note here to get reference.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And what I wondered, then, is this one of those points that we would like Vanda to quietly leak to the board to make sure they are aware of it?
Alan Greenberg: The board review is already assuming that these terms are going to be the same as every other term. So, I don't think this was controversial other than at the At-Large fear of appointing the wrong person.
Evan Leibovitch: I remember I was one of the people that raised shorter terms at the beginning in saying that since ALAC terms themselves are less than three years, maybe we should stick to a similar rotation. Basically, I remember that the discussion was held and resolved to my satisfaction that short terms weren't sufficient.
Alan Greenberg: It was one of the controversial things. It is probably the only one we put to bed. I don't think we need to ask anyone's permission at this point.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, fine.
Alan Greenberg: By the way, the board review is thinking about four years instead of three years.
Carlton Samuels: I was about to tell you that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: You don't think we need to have a reference to the board review (inaudible) –
Alan Greenberg: I do have a reference to the board review somewhere in this, in a lead-in paragraph, and I say we're using the expression three-year term as a placeholder.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It didn't say the word placeholder.
Alan Greenberg: It doesn't say – it says pending that decision, we will use the – in quotes – three-year term in this discussion.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, so it's three years in quotes.
Alan Greenberg: In fact, I think they're going to stick with the three years instead of the four, two, two, but –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (Inaudible)
Vanda Scartezini: (Inaudible) and we have time to get connected with the issues inside the board.
Alan Greenberg: In any case, all we're saying is we'll do what everyone else does. If the three changes to four, so be it; if it doesn't, so be it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's fine, okay. And thanks for the heads up, but that's probably going to be how it stays, (inaudible).
Vanda Scartezini: Good.
Alan Greenberg: Well, that's what came out of the public discussions in Seoul.
Vanda Scartezini: (Inaudible)
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, good.
Vanda Scartezini: (Inaudible)
Alan Greenberg: Vanda, you're very, very faint.
Vanda Scartezini: (Inaudible) hear me?
Alan Greenberg: That's better now.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: You must not have a directional microphone. Thank you for that. My only question, because this is the first time we come to recommendations. This is simply a formatting question, if I may. Do we want to put in a placeholder or a space for comments after each recommendation? Only so that (inaudible) –
Carlton Samuels: I think it would be good to do that – I think it would be good so that people don't get the idea we have a closed mind on this.
Alan Greenberg: If we're going to publish this on a Wiki, which is I assume what we will do, and each of the sections is a separate Wiki page with comments at the bottom, that's fine. I strongly object to opening up documents for everyone to edit. (Inaudible)
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. We could just go the same way as the DAG, say here is the document, submit your comments as self-contained things, and we consider them in the appropriate place.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And it's an either/or choice, but that's why I'm raising it now, where I have the recommendation point. Do we want to elicit –
Alan Greenberg: I think we want to elicit comments on the recommendation-by-recommendation basis. How to format it properly, I haven't thought about it before, but I sort of like the idea of a separate Wiki page for each of the five areas, or whatever the number is, and then naturally comments come at the bottom.
Evan Leibovitch: That's trivial. They can be done like chapters. There is no problem that way.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you. You'd be surprised how much easier it is for people to put in with the right format as opposed to write a self-contained response, which is why you often get less responses to public comments in the ICANN process.
Alan Greenberg: If we were not to have a separate Wiki page for each, I would definitely want to number the sections. The numbering disappeared in this iteration, but it's not as important if it's each a separate page.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. Keep going down while I'm typing.
Alan Greenberg: Director qualifications. Okay, most of them are – the ones out of the bylaws I don't think we have any discretion to alter, nor would we want to. The ones that are within the NomCom's list of things that they push, I have not heard any argument why. And then we have the three ones that were added by At-Large. One originally was understanding of At-Large and has been modified to be structural communication decision-making process, which I think is fine.
The other is understanding – and this – maybe the second one should in fact the first one, that is, having comprehension of the impact of ICANN decisions on users.
And then the third one is a consensus building approach to things.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (Inaudible) sounds like universal agreement. Let's move down.
Alan Greenberg: Okay, and change the order?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Other people?
Carlton Samuels: I'm okay with it as is.
Alan Greenberg: Well, I was just thinking that the first one is representing the global At-Large, global user community as opposed to an At-Large centric one. No one has strong feelings, we can leave it as it is.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep.
Alan Greenberg: It's always good to leave things that can be changed in the first set of comments anyway.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Right. Fair enough.
Alan Greenberg: Now, we do have later on in the selection process, we do talk – we go back to this issue of understanding ICANN and saying we should not eliminate anyone because they don't understand ICANN. And I think we have to make these two sections consistent in some way.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, and I really have a problem putting someone into a position as our representative that can't spell ICANN. We look stupid, they look stupid. The dynamic that happens at the board, you know, that first, do I trust this person, do I like this person, am I going to read my newspaper while this person is talking, all happens so early in the process. I have really strong personal biases on this. So, those biases declared, yes, I agree, Alan.
Alan Greenberg: Then we need to fix it when we come to that point. I understand this is one of Carl's and Danny's hot points, that we don't want an At-Large insider. But the board very carefully did say the At-Large Community all capitalized, and it is an ICANN-defined term in its bylaws.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. We may be splitting hairs here, but I think there is – as far as I am concerned, the person who is picked can be outside of ICANN, but the people doing the picking already are. So, that is already going to be a factor in any election.
So, as far as I'm concerned, I would invite candidates who do not have a deep history of ICANN in the same way that the NomCom brings people to the board that don't necessarily have a deep history of ICANN before they come on.
Alan Greenberg: But a commitment to support and learn about ICANN and work with ICANN. The question is, do we do the same thing with ICANN AT-LARGE, capitalized AT-LARGE?
Evan Leibovitch: Yes. Yes.
Alan Greenberg: And that's different than what some people – what Danny and Carl have said.
Evan Leibovitch: But keeping it capitalized, meaning the infrastructure ICANN designed is consistent with the direction we received.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. Recognize no one satisfies all criteria 100 percent.
Evan Leibovitch: Right.
Alan Greenberg: Okay, let's leave it and we'll see if we need to reword it when we get to the next section, then.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think it's the next section that (inaudible).
Evan Leibovitch: Right.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. So, we're happy about the argument and we're happy about the recommendation in this one.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I am, yes.
Alan Greenberg: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The only thing I would have said, and I think I was happy that it could be in the later section, but you really do need to know what the DNS is.
Alan Greenberg: Isn't that already in –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It's in the –
Carlton Samuels: Methodologies.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Correct, but higher up.
Alan Greenberg: But that also goes to an understanding of the potential impact of ICANN decisions. I mean, that's pretty far-reaching.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, okay.
Alan Greenberg: But I was – I'm pretty sure that this is somewhere in either the bylaws or the NomCom part, is it not?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: In the NomCom part. It is in the NomCom one.
Alan Greenberg: Well, it's not in the words we have there.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I know where I know it's in the NomCom one, it's a question that they ask referees. One of the questions that they ask referees.
Alan Greenberg: No, hold it. It's in the fourth bullet in the bylaws.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Right.
Alan Greenberg: It's implicit. Persons who in aggregate have personal familiarity with the operation of gTLD registrars, registrars ccTLD, IP addresses, Internet banded protocols, DNS is part of that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And NomCom definitely asks that as part of their referee's questions.
Alan Greenberg: And so could we.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And I think we need to, yes. And that's sort of a sidebar.
Alan Greenberg: Yeah, okay. I was pretty sure it was already implied somewhere. It was.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I filled it out so many times in so many (inaudible) in NomCom, I knew it was there. I just couldn't remember where.
Alan Greenberg: All right. Identification of candidates. This is how do we identify who the candidates are, which will proceed on to some sort of election, or some sort of process.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes. And if you don't mind, I'll just come back to the ABSWG issue later and we can discuss it and then just do a global replacement with whatever we decide on.
Alan Greenberg: Uh-huh. Okay.
Carlton Samuels: (Inaudible)
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No, no. GT is a different beat.
Carlton Samuels: Okay, so this is another group in total?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It would be the equivalent to NomCom.
Carlton Samuels: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: So, yes, it is another group, and, yes, the names are far too similar, and I have issue with using the terminology "work group." So, I was going to propose something other than working group. So, ABSXX.
Alan Greenberg: Well, the original one prior to Sebastien's change was the ABSG. It is not a working group, it is a group.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, and I thought group or committee. I preferred committee, and it could actually be capitalized.
Alan Greenberg: I have no problem with that. I agree, WG, calling it a work group tends to confuse the issue.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And it also is not in keeping with what we use work groups, and it is confusing with the terminology that we're working very hard with, Alan and Vanda and I, to make consistent across ICANN, through the GNSO, PDP processes here. We're work groups and teams and drafting teams and the DT is consistent with what we're doing with drafting teams. But the work group isn't consistent with what we're doing with work groups. So, just in the world it's going to be ICANN-wide eventually, let's avoid that little WG and put in either capital G or Committee. Don't care either way.
Sebastien Bachollet: I just want to – I just add A before anything was written for the name of the group. But Committee is good, ABSC, it's okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah.
Alan Greenberg: I will point out that BS has connotation in some languages, and we may want to avoid it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And I think it's highly appropriate.
Alan Greenberg: By design, okay.
Sebastien Bachollet: Yes, by design, you don't have a problem to break. It's going to go very well.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, and it stinks like it already, so I'm very comfortable with it. Go ahead.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. You do know the progression of degrees that one has in a university, don't you?
Evan Leibovitch: Oh, we're not going to go through that.
Alan Greenberg: There's the BS –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We're well aware of it, Alan.
Alan Greenberg: You are? Okay. You know the meaning of these expressions, then?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Piled higher, yes.
Evan Leibovitch: And deeper.
Alan Greenberg: More of the same and then piled higher and deeper. Sorry, I forgot I was talking to educated people.
Evan Leibovitch: But that's only in sciences. Arts degrees are much better.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: More of the S, exactly.
Alan Greenberg: More of the substance. Evan, I wasn't advocating that the group have a rule to do this; I was suggesting in this discussion paper that it's one of the things the Community may want to consider and probably reject.
Evan Leibovitch: I think there ought to be a mechanism by which if there is a very strong incumbent that the selection group, when they go out to potential candidates, make sure that people are aware of this. So we don't say we're drawing them into a process where at the end of it they think we've wasted their time.
So, I think there ought to be some concern about this. But we've got to, in any process that we do here, go out of our way to make sure that we are not suggesting, let alone advocating in any case, that we have appointment rather than election.
Alan Greenberg: And I don't think that was implied in my original sentence, but if it needs changing, then let's do so.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I like what Evan has raised and I think we should be more explicit, even if it means putting in a second – sorry, second or additional point. And the other thing is, as soon as we look at incumbents satisfying our needs, I don't want the Community – which is fine, I have no problem with incumbents – a strong and effective incumbent satisfying our needs is fantastic, but they all have a limited term. Communities can become complacent and do themselves a disservice by being lulled into thinking they've got the best option when in fact –
Alan Greenberg: Do we want a term limit on this section on terms?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I would very much – this raised, to me, the fact that we need to discuss term limits.
Evan Leibovitch: I wasn't getting that bold. As far as I was concerned, it was just at the end of – sorry.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Sorry, Evan. I'll even propose we ask the Community two sets of three, or three sets of three as a maximum.
Alan Greenberg: Well, I suggest – the standard tends to be, I believe, three.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Three threes is very common in a number of organizations I'm in.
Carlton Samuels: Put it to them and then say here is what the standard is and see what comes out.
Evan Leibovitch: But the point I was making didn't go quite that far. I was trying to address a different thing saying at the end of each term, even the incumbent has a role to back to their public and remind them why they are still there.
Carlton Samuels: Well, yes. But if you say that they are on selection list, that immediately implies that.
Alan Greenberg: No. There are people who are going to put their name back even though we don't want them.
Carlton Samuels: That's fine and that's okay, but it's a list.
Evan Leibovitch: It's already happened.
Carlton Samuels: See, that's already happened. They still need to go through the election process.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. So, the large amount of notes that Evan and I made will be shortened into a sentence or so.
Evan Leibovitch: Yeah. We can deal with this.
Alan Greenberg: To say we have to acknowledge that we may be in a position where it's to everyone's advantage that incumbent be returned, and we may want to consider our process. It's not important for another three years at this point. This is certainly one of the ones we can refine, but we don't want to rule it out and say it's never allowed and we must have rotation as has been suggested.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And that's why it needs to be upfront.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. So, the red part has to be replaced by a sentence by somebody. Okay, the discussion. There have been no comments in substance that I can see.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No.
Alan Greenberg: And the recommendation –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And I do like the petition.
Alan Greenberg: The question about who writes the statement of interest, I think we need to start drafting it and hopefully the selection committee or whatever will do a final pass on it before it gets issued, which is eventually what happens with the ICANN Nominating Committee.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. So, that needs to be fixed.
Sebastien Bachollet: One of my point here was to say who is in charge of. Evan (inaudible), but we need to say it's because –
Alan Greenberg: No, I agree. So, we need to fix that, but, again, we're not wordsmithing at this point. One of the things that I realized as I was writing this is do we need what would be called an election chair, or someone to oversee the overall process in a steady state? Or do we say this year it's the design team and it's one of the things we look at in the future?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's not a bad idea, this year's design team and in review, because the review will also have public input we can call for – a person who not only oversees, but a mechanism, an agreed mechanism by which complaints can be managed.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. So, anyone remember where the design team concept comes up?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I mean the definition at the top and again at the bottom –
Carlton Samuels: At the top, yes.
Alan Greenberg: Where it is at the top, then? Sorry, I just can't find it.
Carlton Samuels:: You mean in this document?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I'm away from the desk turning off the air conditioning, which has come on.
Carlton Samuels: In the first page or second page, Alan.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. I still can't find it, but I'm going to put a note –
Sebastien Bachollet: (Inaudible)
Carlton Samuels: (inaudible)
Alan Greenberg: Okay, got it. Thank you. Okay, I'm adding a comment here of we'll also oversee the selection and other process for future (inaudible).
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And while we're just on this, the only other thing I would want in this white paper – and, again, it's fairly standard format is just – in the end it will only need to be short but it needs to be a glossary, and that glossary can have a live link back to the reference point within the document. So, if someone wants to know what a DT is as opposed to a IBSC or G, they can go to the glossary and it's role definition is there.
Alan Greenberg: Uh-huh.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Along with AT-LARGE capitalized, and other things.
Carlton Samuels: So you can actually define it in the glossary and then link it back to the document.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes. In that definition we can say we'll enact review, we'll put out for comment, blah, blah, blah.
Carlton Samuels: Right.
Alan Greenberg: Okay, done. Where are we now? Okay, so we're happy with this section and we're on to Electorate now?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes. Well, we're happy with the variations on the scene, I don't think the –
Alan Greenberg: The typeface seems to be different on this one than the previous ones. No, it isn't.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And here again, it's one of those issues that we've got the full slice of this on the Wiki and we just need to (inaudible).
Alan Greenberg: Okay. I did change this, by the way, from the original version, because the ALAC voting was there twice, which was pushing the point a little bit too much.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It's still only A to G. I thought we were only A to G on the Wiki?
Alan Greenberg: No, there was an H, ALAC was B and D, or something like that. And, by the way, in Google docs, when you remove a bullet, a lettered bullet point, it removes the item but doesn't remove the letter, and you get two letters typed on top of each other. You can fit –
Carlton Samuels:: You fix it here?
Alan Greenberg: No, no, you go into the html and fix it.
Carlton Samuels: Okay.
Alan Greenberg: I just love this, you can tell. Okay, discussion. There are some comments. Is it allowed to – and this is a religious argument or is that in bad form?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I had a problem with (inaudible), actually.
Alan Greenberg: Okay.
Evan Leibovitch: What has occurred to me is it seems that things are polarized, is that things have come down that although we described many options, it's basically come down to, as far as I'm concerned, or at least as far as I've heard, two different options. There are people that want to have a non-ICANN public At-Large voting, and there is a broadly achieved consensus amongst those who wanted them within ICANN.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And I think it's a philosophical as opposed to religious issue.
Evan Leibovitch: Right. But would you agree with that characterization?
Carlton Samuels: Yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes. And it just depends when you've got the unwashed masses listening to either side of the debate. At the moment it simply depends who sounds like the best orator and who is the best presenter as to how the populous will be swayed, and that's what we need to avoid in this.
Alan Greenberg: But I disagree with the summary. I think one of the first dichotomies, the first split is do we want this to be a general election with individual voters from around the world? Or do we want it to be the At-Large Community?
Carlton Samuels: That pretty much sums up what Evan says.
Alan Greenberg: No, no, I understand that. I said once we – if we then decide it should be the At-Large Community, then there are other decision points which are not at all resolved today. Should it be ALSs or should it be RALOs, or should it be the ALAC, or should it be some combination (inaudible) –
Evan Leibovitch: And at one point they go see me make a little strongly later on in this document is that there is more that's been decided, I think, than we're letting on.
Alan Greenberg: Perhaps. Okay. There is a comment in the middle of the discussion from Sebastien and from Evan.
Sebastien Bachollet: Well, I am only saying that I did not think the ALS should be in the way. I mean, it never seemed to me to have been a very good idea.
Alan Greenberg: We're not debating the argument here, we're simply presenting the case.
Evan Leibovitch: Yes. But if we paint in that way, we may be doing ourselves a disservice. When we had the discussion whether or not ALSs should have a direct vote, there were two issues: one may have been suggested, well, they don't know enough about ICANN to be able to vote. Well, that sort of defeats the whole intent of having the structures in the first place.
I remember one of the other arguments with which I agreed more saying is if you do one vote for ALS, then basically you have regions going to a race of who signs up more ALSs just to be able to have more say in the vote.
Alan Greenberg: No, no, no, no. It stated later, and I think the principle which we would only violate putting our lives in jeopardy is that the weighting would have to provide each region with equal weighting. All you do by signing up more ALSs is dilute the vote at each one.
Evan Leibovitch: Then, basically, how different is that from a directed vote of the region?
Sebastien Bachollet: This is precisely what it would not be. It would not be a difference.
Alan Greenberg: Well, first of all, most regions do not have directed votes for their ALAC members. The ALAC members may choose to honor the intent, but they do not have directed votes. Only, I believe, Asia Pacific does.
Carlton Samuels: We – LACRALO has directed votes.
Alan Greenberg: Do they? Okay, sorry. I take it back.
Carlton Samuels: And the thing that I have been advocating all along is to remove it for this present process. We do.
Alan Greenberg: Okay.
Evan Leibovitch: Heidi has just raised a point on the chat about whether or not when we're dealing with the point of vie that says individuals and not necessarily ICANN individuals should be involved in the vote, do we try and preempt that issue by discussing the problems with the 2000 vote and the indication that the board is likely not to go for that?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: To that end I did write to Tricia and Jean-Jacques to informally ask how we may be able to have in this document a clear statement to that effect, but that is something else I think Vanda might want to take up (inaudible).
Alan Greenberg: Did any of you read Alejandro's statement on that? He's the one I quoted verbatim.
Evan Leibovitch: Remind me.
Alan Greenberg: This has been tried before and unequivocally shown to lead to a disaster.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Exactly, yes. And I'd be happy to actually have it also come from the board.
Alan Greenberg: No, I understand that, but the lead-in paragraph in this discussion, where I use the term religious and philosophical, I don't think it's a philosophical one. I think it's a religious one. It's a matter of faith, and we can choose to change that term.
Sebastien Bachollet: If you mean is with Alejandro Pisanty, I'm speaking of. He was in favor of a directed vote, by the way.
Alan Greenberg: Well, that's moot. In this case we're talking of whether we should have a vote by the unwashed masses, as it were.
Sebastien Bachollet: Yeah. Well, he doesn't want that, but he wants a directed vote.
Alan Greenberg: I understand.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. Well, there's multiple – yeah, that goes back to what you were saying multiple things. First of all, do we allow non-ICANN people to vote? I think we've covered that one.
Alan Greenberg: I think that is not going to pass. I think there are a small number of people who say it. They're going to keep on saying it. I don't think it's going to win, and it would be nice if we can get something from the board or something or other to say that now.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I would ask from the SIC point of view, I think Vanda might need to ask from the board's point of view, and this is another one of those points where we could in fact – that quote is an unreferenced quote, so perhaps referencing that quote would be worthwhile.
Alan Greenberg: It would be nicer if we could rewrite it in English so we can – I did change a word or two in it because – from the Google translation
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, let's approach – do you want me to approach him or do you want to approach him?
Alan Greenberg: I can approach him and say is this a reasonable translation of what you said, and then we can reference it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Because I just think, you know, if this was an undergraduate paper, I would want the reference. Sebastien, your comments, then, on the discussion?
Sebastien Bachollet: My comments is that we have to be – to take care of some things that if we have people who strongly advocate for everybody voting and people who strongly say just ALAC, the middle ground it's maybe not what we are expecting. And we have also to deal with policy and how to go, to where we think it's the best place to go.
Alan Greenberg: Well, and that's what our recommendation should be doing.
Sebastien Bachollet: Yes. Yes, yes, but my fear here is that middle ground will be one ALS, one vote. Even if it's not what we suggest, if it's a big debate, it may end up like that. I know the argument why it's not a good idea.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. When you say ALS, one vote, do you mean but weighted by region?
Sebastien Bachollet: Alan, it's a question – I am not saying how it will happen and if it's by region or not. It could be just one ALS, one vote and that's it. But it could be also weighted –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Gentlemen, I can hear the screams from Asia Pacific now with the disproportionate – the matters with most of the world's population and only the same number of ALSs that two countries and another small one have. I would – I mean, I hope we don't have to go down that path, because it's going to be highly destructive. I also think – and I do mean destructive with a capital D. I also like to think that if we remove the line that starts, "One argument that has been made …," the document loses nothing but gains safety of not criticizing ourselves and ALSs.
Carlton Samuels: I agree with Cheryl on this.
Alan Greenberg: Ditto.
Sebastien Bachollet: Cheryl, my point was exactly to find a way to go to what we think is a good place to go. It's not to say I think it's good to have one ALS, one vote, but if we don't – and I think it's not a good idea to go there, then it's to try –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I have no problem with the question of (inaudible) of the ALSs being involved. There are real procedural issues, there are things that I think are too big at this stage in our maturity to grapple with. It also brings in the matter of needing to ratify and ensure that all ALSs are what they say they are. All of that stuff comes in, but I don't think the line about success should be there.
Alan Greenberg: Okay, gone.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you.
Alan Greenberg: I will answer, even though the line is gone, I will answer Sebastien's comment of doesn't the summit prove we can get people involved? All the summit proves is that we can get people involved who come to meetings. It doesn't prove we can really move and get people who don't come to meetings within the ALS involved.
Evan Leibovitch: It proves if we take sufficient steps we can get people more involved than they have been, but that's about it.
Alan Greenberg: I understand, but as long as it involves a trip halfway around the world, that's not going to work. That (inaudible) –
Sebastien Bachollet: I personally disagree with you, Alan, because when you see what has happened in some regions, you have some people, not all, yes, some people more involved in the discussion, participation.
Alan Greenberg: Yes, but it's a very small percentage.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And, gentlemen, we will be coming back to this later in the ExCom meeting because one of my criticisms of the African outreach program that they're trying to put together for Nairobi is that it is simply saying the summit didn't work, and we paid a shitload of money to get them there. So, let's leave that to the side.
Alan Greenberg: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And my screen has now – no, it's unfrozen, good. That's fine. I couldn't scroll down for a moment. There was a moment of panic. Sorry. Primarily, the (inaudible) is the only thing that is now – I don't understand these comments.
Sebastien Bachollet: The question was not based on the origin of the (inaudible), and I suggest to say not based only on that because it could be based partly, and Evan say not based primarily on the origin. It's English term.
Alan Greenberg: I guess I would leave both of them out and leave the original wording. The reason is, I don't believe we want to get into a discussion of what does voting with one's heart mean and to what extent do they still think about it as opposed to pure emotion? That's a how many angels dance on the head of a pin discussion. The issues of language and origin should not be critical issues in this.
Sebastien Bachollet: Sorry, I partly disagree with you on that, and it's not –
Carlton Samuels: It can be used as a cover for other things.
Sebastien Bachollet: For example, language, it's not – origin is one question. It's because each one of just one origin. Usually you don't have two or three. Language, it could be a skill. It's not just your language. And it's why I didn't want to answer too much in that discussion. It's why I was suggesting to add "only." Or you taking something else, gender, but not language. Because language, it's not just you don't ever take it, one, yes, maybe two, but you can also have it as a skill.
Carlton Samuels: And acquire it.
Alan Greenberg: I look at this in both ways. One can imagine that Latin Americans vote for an English-speaking person because they'll do better on the board because their language is better. I'm not necessarily only saying vote for your own language. Okay, what do people want? "Only," "primarily," "none," or remove the whole issue?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If we're going to have anything, then the word "primarily" is probably preference.
Alan Greenberg: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Then the next part done under recommendations, all of that is all very exciting discussion, but in fact it's only substantive to Alan's personal note about his personal preference. And it's on the table because it's listed in the A to G, which it needs to be, which is my comment, leave it on the table.
Alan Greenberg: The question is, what do we put in the recommendation? By the way, Evan, I think you misread what I said. When I said Hong supports it, you said you do, too. Hong was supporting just the ALAC voting.
Evan Leibovitch: Yes. No, and actually I erased that.
Alan Greenberg: Oh. You can't go making changes to your changes without noting it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Of course he can. Of course he can.
Alan Greenberg: Yeah, but it confuses the peasants.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, that's called elections. That's the whole name of the game, isn't it?
Alan Greenberg: Let's put that in the notes.
Evan Leibovitch: Anyway, I don't want to beat this into the ground. I've already said we needed to.
Alan Greenberg: I was just putting it as a note to this group; I didn't write it in the recommendation. I guess the wisdom is, we leave it with the black and everything in red disappears, including my own note.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's my point. Yeah, that's my point. Delete Alan's note. It's all on the table. It all needs to be on the table, and the agreed recommendation, which is the one that has the majority of support at all meetings so far is the recommendation and Community will respond to it.
Evan Leibovitch: Right. I mean, we've mentioned the alternatives, we've mentioned what the preferences are, and here's the recommendation.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's right. Leave them tabled and here's the recommendation.
Alan Greenberg: And I just note after spending 40 to 50 hours writing this document and it was 4:00 in the morning, I'm allowed to put it in my personal preference.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Alan, that is exactly the same as me going back to my personal preference of us not having a voting board member.
Alan Greenberg: Then maybe you should put that in.
Evan Leibovitch: Oh, no.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Evan?
Evan Leibovitch: Yes?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Do you know how hard I fought to get these, including kissing more board members in more ways that you can possibly imagine, to get them through, right?
Evan Leibovitch: Uh-huh.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: My core values still disagree with having a voting member in preference to anyone of influence. I still think we could have been more powerful with the right person as a liaison, but that's my personal view; that's not what I’m here to push.
Evan Leibovitch: No, and your point is taken. It's just I guess – the gut says we're too far down that road, but –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: But, see, my core value is different to what I'm fighting for, and that's okay.
Carlton Samuels: Cheryl, I share that view, also, if you recall.
Evan Leibovitch: And, to be honest with you, I'm somewhat fearful of losing a liaison that has a direct tie to us.
Carlton Samuels: Yes, that is my view. We are better off having the right person with liaison, somebody able to persuade by argument and simply presence.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: However –
Sebastien Bachollet: And I don't know why we are doing all that stuff if we stay during our seasonal days and holidays and not working, the process will not go anywhere and we will (inaudible).
Alan Greenberg: I will note that there are two things that pushed us in this direction.
Vanda Scartezini: (Inaudible)
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Enough of this fantasy stuff, come on.
Sebastien Bachollet: It's just looking at the thing and figuring out how best you would get.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh, God, I love working with you guys.
Vanda Scartezini: (Inaudible)
Alan Greenberg: Okay, voting process. The orange comment from Patrick, I'm not quite sure of the intent of putting it in. In general, we are not quoting other people in this document for the argument.
Sebastien Bachollet: No, no. My reasoning here was to give what it was written. It is not a Frenchman who say that the French election could be an idea. But I think the idea of having two rounds and not any more, it's one possible way. The maybe we can – you say the alternatives, it could be a second alternative to have –
Alan Greenberg: Oh, okay.
Sebastien Bachollet: – (inaudible), and to take two, and that's – and I caught Patrick because he write it well and –
Alan Greenberg: Okay. So, what you're suggesting is that we have a process which takes no more than two rounds. If the first round does not yield a definitive winner, then the top leading candidates are put off against each other.
Evan Leibovitch: I agree with that, and that basically goes to the hybrid that Tricia was talking about in the call that we dealt with that.
Alan Greenberg: Not quite but –
Evan Leibovitch: Close.
Sebastien Bachollet: Most of it.
Alan Greenberg: It's an interesting variation.
Sebastien Bachollet: Most of it would.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. So, if we take Patrick's comment and make sure that it's identified as one of the alternatives, we seem to have two discussions here, by the way.
Sebastien Bachollet: Can I suggest that we simply say that there is a two-vote process and leave it a little bit later to flesh it out?
Alan Greenberg: Okay. Right now I'm just looking at the formatting. There are two sections labeled "Discussion." Is one of them supposed to be alternatives?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah. No, that's good pickup. I see it.
Alan Greenberg: I may have written it that way, I don't remember.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think that might have been 4:30 in the morning and (inaudible) –
Alan Greenberg: It could well be, and Evan carefully formatted it. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think it's an alternate to the second.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. So, we need to, one, clean up duplicate titles.
Evan Leibovitch: Are you doing that, or I can do it right now.
Alan Greenberg: No, I'm not sure what they're supposed to be. They both look like they're discussions right now.
Evan Leibovitch: Well, what I'd like to do is maybe come back. I mean, we're getting deep into this call now. What I'd like to do is come back maybe in the next 24 hours and flesh out the alternative section of this.
Alan Greenberg: I'm just writing a section here – just writing instructions here. Clean up duplicate titles, add Patrick's specific recommendation.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And hopefully in that same 24-hour period we might get some feedback from SIC Review Committee, whatever hat I want to wear, which would be nice.
Evan Leibovitch: The one thing that was of concern to me is that this section might muddy the waters further in terms of if we have two rounds, do we have two different groups of voters? If we've already dealt with electorate above, are we revisiting it here?
Alan Greenberg: I think in fact there is a forward reference to it. And when Tricia suggested the hybrid, I believed she was talking about the same electorate but an STV vote followed by a direct vote.
Evan Leibovitch: Yes, and that's what I thought. That's what I thought and that's what I –
Alan Greenberg: But I asked her and she was very wishy-washy on the answer and said no, no, both things could change.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay.
Alan Greenberg: Since I made the mistake of asking her, I've got to honor what she said.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. So, Alan, let me make – like I say, I'm going to add some stuff to the alternatives that I hope will flesh out, because there's a couple of different things going on. How many rounds, what kind of votes. There are a number of different things going on at the same time. So, we've really got to make some of this clearer.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. I would suggest that we, given Patrick's suggestion, that we do have a recommendation to make.
Patrick Vande Walle: Yes, I would. But can I just –
Alan Greenberg: And – go ahead.
Carlton Samuels: Can I just ask that we simply preface it by saying here's – frame it. There is these two types, here's what we would recommend, and then answer Patrick's question in the recommendations.
Alan Greenberg: Am I going crazy or did someone just change one of the discussions to alternatives?
Evan Leibovitch: I did.
Alan Greenberg: You're going to drive me around the bend, you know.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh, come on, Alan, just go with the flow.
Alan Greenberg: Hey, I'm applying for my formal (inaudible).
Evan Leibovitch: I thought that was granted a long time ago.
Sebastien Bachollet: Too late Alan, too late.
Alan Greenberg: Evan, you'll be happy to know that when a colleague couldn't open a file the other day and he was getting an obscure error message, and he said – and I suggested rebooting Windows, which sometimes helps, I said the real solution, according to some of my colleagues, is to abandon Windows and get a Linux system. I trust you'll be happy that I said that.
Evan Leibovitch: There you go. Not just me, there's actually lots of people around, but that's a different conversation.
Alan Greenberg: I know, but I say you'll be happy in knowing that. Of course, I said it tongue-in-cheek and didn't mean it.
Evan Leibovitch: But he couldn't tell.
Alan Greenberg: Yes, he could. He knows me well enough. Okay. We are finished this document now, we're finished going through this pass. I would like to know how we are going to do the next pass. Having six people editing it in parallel I think is not the right answer. It might be if you're (inaudible), but it's not the right one for me.
Sebastien Bachollet: May I suggest that now we are – we say what we wanted to say, we write what we wanted to write, that Evan and Alan make the next version for us.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. Let us freeze what revision we're at at this very moment. No one type.
Evan Leibovitch: Hold on. I've got one –
Alan Greenberg: It says Cheryl and Evan are editing.
Evan Leibovitch: Yeah, I've got one sentence I'm adding in in the alternatives. Just bear with me.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And, Alan, don't panic. It says editing now. Anyone who is logged on is listed.
Carlton Samuels: Is listed yes, because I'm on the list and I'm not.
Alan Greenberg: By the way, the instructions said I could click on something and open a chat with you people. I haven't figured out how do to that.
Evan Leibovitch: That's if everybody is on Google Chat.
Alan Greenberg: Ah, it didn't say that. It said I could click on the box at the top and open up a chat.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, and you could with you and me, yes.
Alan Greenberg: How? I tried right and left clicking, everything, and it didn't work.
Sebastien Bachollet: You're not on Google Chat.
Alan Greenberg: Well, no, I'm not. It didn't say I had to be on Google Chat.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay, sorry.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: But it's okay. He is on Google Wave, which means we can do it within there.
Alan Greenberg: I learned one thing this week, have pity on me.
Evan Leibovitch: All right. I have finished, then, my piece.
Alan Greenberg: Except I see a word that ends in – that only has an "r" in it. Maybe if I refresh the rest of the word will come. No, if you refresh it goes to the top of the bloody screen. Okay, rounds. Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If you hit "Save" it keeps you where you are.
Evan Leibovitch: So, as of right now the last revision that I have that I can see, it's telling me is 573.
Alan Greenberg: So, Cheryl, do you mean the intuitive interface is that if you want to see what other people are doing, you say I want to save what I changed, even if I didn't change anything?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Look, it was built by geeks.
Alan Greenberg: I'm just making it clear what it is, 573 is the magic number, okay.
Evan Leibovitch: You realize going through the phone lines it sounded from here like you said it was built by Gates.
Alan Greenberg: Oh, a collaboration we hadn't heard about.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: My friends at Google will have me turned off on principle if that was ever to get out. No, definitely not what I said. Geeks. Geeks.
Alan Greenberg: Geeks, Gates, it's all the same thing. Only the vowels change and those are optional.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. Look I reckon this is launch shape. I actually see the next 24 hours on this launching it into a near final document and I'm very excited about it.
Alan Greenberg: We agree. Okay, Evan?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I want to point out before we move off, and it is my intention to do that, that I put into the ExCom chat, part seven, what I sent out to Tricia and Jean Jacques, and copy to Patrick as I indicated I would at our last call. And Jean Jacques' reply, which says, "I'm at Frankfurt airport, but thank you very much, I'll get back to you," and I'm assuming he will when he lands. And as yet we haven't gotten anything in from Tricia and Patrick, but I expect we will soon.
So, in this same time period we should hopefully get some other statements to plug in where we desired. Back to you, Alan.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. Evan, you want to go first or I go first?
Evan Leibovitch: On what?
Alan Greenberg: On the revision.
Evan Leibovitch: Go ahead. I mean, I'm comfortable with simultaneous but we'll be sufficiently working on different things. I don't think we'll get in each other's way.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. Well, we need to privately decide which sections we're working on.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay.
Alan Greenberg: We'll decide amongst ourselves.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. You start from the top, I'll start from the bottom.
Sebastien Bachollet: During the next hour you will not be able to do something, Alan. Then maybe we can ask Evan to start to do something now.
Evan Leibovitch: Actually, I'm in the exact same situation. Once we leave this call I'm basically out of commission for a couple of hours.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay, sorry. Then you make a decision.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. Then, Evan, let's talk on Skype before we – whoever gets there first, fine, and otherwise let's debate it on Skype.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The only other thing is, what I would encourage you both to do, so we all know what the hell's going on, Sebastien has opened up the At-Large .wav. We might rename it to be the ABCT, right? And that's fine, too. Can you two do that chat in there, so you can chat at each other there rather than in Skype or – It's up to you, but I just – if you're going to be working at different ends of the thing, you can probably –
Alan Greenberg: How about if we use the Skype Chat that we're all on right now?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, whatever. Then as soon as we are to the next step, I'm going to ask us to put the document in it's (inaudible) ultimate form into .wav as well, so that's another method that we can allow public. We may have to actually start up a new .wav and make it public. But just as another way that we can have (inaudible) –
Alan Greenberg: But in wav, can we – is it a public document that people can change?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, you can make it public.
Alan Greenberg: No, no, but I don't want to. I want people to comment; I don't want them to be making changes to the document. We'll never be – remember, we've got copies going out in 97 different directions. People who are on the other processes won't see things – changes that are made by someone on wav.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Alan, the only thing they will be able to do is make their comments.
Alan Greenberg: Okay, that's what I was asking.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, yes.
Alan Greenberg: And it's also going to have to be put into a Wiki form, which means reformatting the whole bloody thing, also.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, and the Wiki reformat, we've agreed, needs to be into page per section, and because we're doing sections, we might as well number the sections so that other mechanisms can also use it.
Alan Greenberg: To the extent we can do that within Google docs, yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, we can do all that. Okay, thank you. Evan, thank you.
Evan Leibovitch: Oh, yeah. Now the rest of you have a regular meeting to deal with.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you.
Alan Greenberg: Heidi, please include AFRALO Wiki as well. I don't know what that meant, but –
Heidi Ullrich: I was asking the same. Dave, could you clarify that, please?
Dave Kissoondoyal: Yes, it's about a document, Heidi, which version should be created in the public Wiki. So, Heidi, just to include the document in the AFRALO Wiki as well.
Alan Greenberg: Do we want separate copies in each RALO?
Evan Leibovitch: Actually, I think what should happen is right now, obviously, the thing is still in flux. At a certain point we are all going to say, okay, revision number such-and-such is the definitive version that will stand alone as a document. At that point, then it can get copied out. As a standalone doc, it can get copied out into Wiki, it can be mailed to somebody as a Word file, it doesn't matter.
Carlton Samuels: Freeze and then you distribute.
Evan Leibovitch: Yes.
Alan Greenberg: I will point out, I don't know if it's something unique to my eight-year-old printer, but when I print the .pdf from Google docs, it takes forever to print. I think it's because it's including fonts or something. And when I create a .pdf from a Word document, it prints in a flash. So, we may want to make sure whatever we do is printer-friendly.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, I think because we still want them to primarily use our Wiki and just give them every alternative.
Evan Leibovitch: Well, Alan, I first need to ask, are you using a fresh ribbon?
Alan Greenberg: I actually graduated to laser.
Evan Leibovitch: Oh, okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: What we need to do is to try and have, as we would for other Wiki pages, just a .pdf link.
Alan Greenberg: Yeah. I'm just saying not all .pdfs are created equal, and if we create .pdf from Word, it may be a better .pdf than the one from Google docs.
Evan Leibovitch: That's the least of our worries.
Alan Greenberg: Pure mechanics.
Evan Leibovitch: That's the least of our worries. That's the least of our worries. I figure what happens is once we freeze the Google doc it moves into the Wiki, the Wiki becomes the definitive version that people then pound on.
Alan Greenberg: Fine.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Nobody will be pounding on our Google doc, that's just internal.
Alan Greenberg: Okay.
Evan Leibovitch: Okey-doke. So, if that's the case, I guess the rest of you have another meeting to cut to, that we're already –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It's not another meeting.
Evan Leibovitch: It's the same meeting, it's just the one I don't have to hang around for.
Alan Greenberg: But you're welcome to, of course.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It's perfectly public, if it saves you listening to the tape later. Yes, (inaudible), we are going to get directly onto the ExCom call. In fact, this has been the ExCom call. This is simply item one.
Evan Leibovitch: As a matter of fact, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to put on mute so I can hear it, but I'm not in it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Evan, you now understand why I was hoping to get our ExCom call done first and then give you a call, but never mind. Okay, here we go. All right, we have an agenda. I did make a comment into the .wav form, so if you go into Google you'll see that there is a small comment.
Evan Leibovitch: And he's disconnected rather than muted. Anyway, it doesn't matter, unless we've dropped someone else. Okay, onto our standing agenda items. My heavens, this is like a time warp, all the action items from 22 December. I thought we'd actually already dealt with the 22 December ones. Was that me being crazy?
Heidi Ullrich: The 8th of December ones, we've dealt with most of them, but the 22nd of December, given that was only two days before the holidays, are many still, but that just means that we now need to start moving on these faster.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. So, let's have a quick look at the 22 December ones. So, the 8th of December, sorry. It's all a bit of a blur. And you can hear I'm still slightly slurring? I should ask now, Sebastien, how is your back recovering? Are you getting a bit better?
Sebastien Bachollet: Yeah, it's better. I don't know which color on my back, blue, yellow or something like that, but it's start to be okay and I can move with no problem, and that's good. And you, how are you?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, you take care of yourself and please be very sure that I'm not just trying to compete with you.
Sebastien Bachollet: I hope so. There are other ways to compete, not this one.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Exactly. And the sad thing is, you know, here it was New Year's Eve in my part of the world, but it was the middle of the afternoon and I hadn't even had a sip of champagne. And to fall flat on my face in the middle of the road, I did actually look up as I was laying on the tarmac and I went, oh, well, at least there are no cars coming. Now, let me see, what have I hurt? So, I did it publicly, but as you know, give me a stage and I'll (inaudible) --. Okay, back to action items now. I've given you a break and a giggle.
We've got the Wiki issue, and to be honest, some of what we've discussed earlier actually comes into a review of Wiki and Wiki pages, which is another thing on our to-do list and Heidi will be keen to work with each and every one of us, or Matthias will be keen to work with each and every one of us, I guess at some point in the not too distant future to see what the issues are. But, Sebastien, was your Wiki issues solved or just disappeared? You were having a problem with your Wiki?
Sebastien Bachollet: No, no, it's solved.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, good. I have no idea what the HSTLD Advisory Group by Andy Welch references to. I have a memory of a conversation, I just can't remember what we needed to do.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, this is something that we need to look into, and I will look at the transcript and forward – ask the appropriate staff people on this.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. Because the high security – I mean, it's like that sentence doesn't give us enough information.
Heidi Ullrich: Yeah. I'll have to go back to the transcript on that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah. I understand the words, I just don't understand what we've asked you to do. If I don't know, I see that none of us do. Anyone else help here?
Alan Greenberg: I think it says she's going to tell us what it is, so when she does, we'll know.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. The other stuff –
Sebastien Bachollet: It's a question I read in the Skype shot soon as it was published to give more information on that, yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: But this is something that is wanting to be noted in our January meeting? Is this an agenda item for our January meeting?
Carlton Samuels: I don't remember. All I remember is that Sebastien brought up the fact that ICANN was now subscribing to this Committee, and we would explore what it meant in context of the At-Large.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. So, it's not actually something we need to put into the January agenda, but it's something we need to keep and have a look at and see when we know what it is and what's going on, what we might need to do. So, may or may not be an item for discussion. So, we'll just get more information.
Alan Greenberg: When we find out what it is, we'll send it out to our Community and if anyone cares enough about it, it may pop up as work.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, fine. The agenda item under domain name registered using private proxy services. Help again. Maybe I was more concussed than I realized, because I really don't know – okay. I can put that in as an agenda item, but are we discussing in our January meeting about it?
Heidi Ullrich: This is Patrick's issue, where he was only given five minutes during the 20-second ALAC call, and I think he wanted to discuss that in greater detail.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I thought he wanted –
Alan Greenberg: (Inaudible) does he want to brief us?
Carlton Samuels: My understanding was he was trying to brief us but he didn't get enough time, so he figured that since he's worked on it he ought to give us more information he has to share.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. So, he wants to brief us and make a recommendation.
Carlton Samuels: Right.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: All right. Because we're actually going to need to put this agenda together fairly early. Ten-minute, 15-minute briefing and discussion?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes. I have from the action items from that – the domain names registered conference call, it said that he wanted to focus on the wording for request for RALO to other ALSs.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think it was that we want more people involved. Let's give him 10 minutes.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, next section item. Carlton –
Carlton Samuels: Let me tell you what we've been doing.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah. Now, I'm going to move away from my desk, so I'm going to be in listen-only mode, and if we need to move onto the next point, seeing as Alan has been doing so much in the last hour, Sebastien, can you move us through the agenda items while I'm on the listen-only mode?
Sebastien Bachollet: No problem. Okay, go ahead, Carlton.
Carlton Samuels: Okay. I have been working with the Trinidad (inaudible) Computer Society. Dev, you know, that they had automated parts of the presentation for their workspace and the dashboard. I was going to – we were capitalizing on that work where they have automated reading the public comments pages. And then we are trying to format the items that are listed from the public comment pages into line items. And then we are reformatting some informational items on each line.
So, for example, for ALAC purposes, we wanted to add information like when the public comment period, if any, was supposed to end, and then we work backwards from there to see where we would need to have comments from RALOs or comments from ALAC prepared and who was responsible for that.
We are trying to get that done. It was supposed to have been done before Christmas week, but it's not completed yet, I was told yesterday.
But essentially all we're trying to do is to add some more information on each line item and add more time data, more scheduled data on it. We don't want to – one of the things that came up is that we don't want to hard code the periods in which we are expecting information, so that you can actually change a variable and it ripples all the way through each line. It's a little involved, but we are trying to automate it as best as possible.
Heidi Ullrich: Carlton, this all be done on the current PAD, is that correct?
Carlton Samuels: Right. They are using the current PAD as the model. So, they are using their dashboard and they are picking – on their dashboard they pick up all of the public comments on the ICANN public comments pages. But they only give a number now.
So, what we are going to do is to put more description on each number and then add it to our pad, and then reformat the PAD to include more scheduled information based on the comment date. We started on the comment period, from the ICANN public comment, and started working backwards, when ALAC should have an advisory, when the RALO should, and so on.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay. To be clear on this, does that mean that every time that there is a new public comment, that that will automatically go onto the PAD regardless of whether the ExCom or the ALAC have agreed or said that that issue should go on the PAD?
Carlton Samuels: Well, that is part of the – yes, it's going to go on the PAD with one exception. We will have a column that requests whether ALAC says this is going to require action. And once it says yes or no, you want visibility for it first, and then the ability to make a decision, ALAC to make a decision whether or not they will take it up. And so long as – as soon as it says yes or no, it's off the PAD.
Heidi Ullrich: I see.
Carlton Samuels: So, the first thing we want is visibility, especially for those on the public comment pages of ICANN. And then the decision loop starts.
Alan Greenberg: Carlton, it's Alan. I'm a little bit confused that you're talking about Trinidad and Tobago's dashboard, I'm not quite sure I understand the interaction between the ICANN public comment forms, the PAD and the dashboard.
Carlton Samuels: Okay. If you look at the background, that's what they developed. They have automated picking up the information from the public comment page.
Alan Greenberg: That I understand the concept of.
Carlton Samuels: Right. So, that's one part of it. But they do not outline the topic as an item on a list. So, what we're doing with them is to actually create and include as a listed item. So, on our PAD it appears as a line item on the list of open public commentaries.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. But right now someone goes into that Google spreadsheet and types something in. What are you saying is going to happen instead?
Carlton Samuels: That's right. We are trying to automate that. We are automating that.
Alan Greenberg: So, "we" being some program in the Caribbean is going to modify the PAD.
Carlton Samuels: That's right. And they started with the PAD as it now exists and they are actually working to see how we can get it updated automatically. And there are two things to the automation. One, to automate the PAD and then to generate e-mails to the various At-Large groups from the items on the pad, because that would be important to the countdown for the dates by action.
Alan Greenberg: I will give you a personal opinion. You are building a very complex system which is heavily dependent on specific people, and when they stop being interested in it, the whole thing will fall apart.
Carlton Samuels: Well, the thing is, we're trying to automate as much as possible, and they think that they can do it fairly easily. So, let's give it a shot.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Once it's automated, then I assume whatever coding it is can be more centrally managed, that we won't be incumbent on the particular ALS. And then what will happen after our monthly meetings, be they the ExCom or the ALAC ones, is open up the PAD, everything will be populated, and a yes/no decision is made. Do I have that correct?
Carlton Samuels: That's correct. That's exactly what we are – that's our objective.
Alan Greenberg: Okay. But I believe we need things going into the PAD before they become ICANN comment periods. Our whole system breaks down in terms of timing if we do not start working on things before the public comment opens.
Carlton Samuels: Well, all right. So, where do we get that as an official – as official data?
Alan Greenberg: I don't think it is necessarily official data. I think it's a decision of At-Large to work on things. There is no conflict in also taking things off the comment period when they open up, but I don't thin we should be limited to that, is what I'm saying.
Carlton Samuels: Well, I don't have a problem with that generally speaking. I just thought that we were more interested in having the ones, the public comments properly sequenced.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think that's the important step forward, Carlton, and I don't think what Alan is saying is making it an either/or. I think there is also a piece of work whereby people who are involved in – and this is going to be more common, not less common – and did you all enjoy seeing my chokes with me, by the way? They're all much happier chokes now. I've let them out and given them their corn and their (inaudible).
The people who are in work groups in the SOs, right, or even in some of the ACs, can also have a mechanism to say this is coming up. We are forecasting this issue is going to be, very much like we've done with the WhoIs this time. We know there is an awful lot going to happen about WhoIs and (inaudible). So, I don't think it's an either/or.
Alan Greenberg: Thank you for saying it better than I did.
Carlton Samuels: So can we then put a portion of the Google docs that says issues on the horizon are something like that and list them and allow editing?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Perfect, yeah.
Carlton Samuels: Allow individual editing on that?
Alan Greenberg: I just wanted to make sure that what you're doing was not going to preclude that.
Carlton Samuels: Oh, no, no, no, no, we don't want to do that. No, we're not doing that at all. You can still go in and edit manually. We're just saying that just to ensure that we catch all of – especially the ones open for public comment and especially to make sure that the ALAC makes a decision in a timely way.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, and what the forecasting then also does is allow us to do better scheduling and planning of Community briefing calls or other –
Carlton Samuels: And so on, that's precisely what it is. That's all we're doing.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, good.
Carlton Samuels: So, we will have this countdown and then we will manage the countdown. It's one of the reasons we don't want to have a hard coded countdown period, but to allow us to set up a schedule individually for each of them. Do you follow me here?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Will it be putting – sorry, a question from me again – will it be putting some sort of standard 10, 14, 25, 30 day back staffing for us that we can then edit?
Carlton Samuels: Right.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Right. Because that's a fair amount of the ExCom meeting time that is taken up by doing that backward map.
Carlton Samuels: Right. So, what we will do is to automate that and put it up, and then we can change that based on how the work flows, you see? For example, this last thing that we had here, where we're saying if we put out our director, what we just went through, for public comment, we might not have enough time. You could still put it out and change the entire schedule by simply –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: This will be 15 days as opposed to 30, and this will be changed into 5, or whatever, yep, yep.
Carlton Samuels: Right.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Good, good.
Carlton Samuels: So, that's the objective of that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I'm still not back at my desk, but –
Sebastien Bachollet: If we can agree with that, we can go to the next issue is issue on how to create better ALS/RALO/ALAC relations to be discussed in Nairobi.
Heidi Ullrich: Sebastien, can I just go back to that last issue. Carlton, do you think this will all be ready to be reviewed during the next ALAC meeting?
Carlton Samuels: I am hoping very much for that, Cheryl. We should have had the first draft completed at Christmas, end of Christmas week, but we got – it didn't work out as we had planned.
Heidi Ullrich: So, should that go onto the ALAC agenda, then?
Carlton Samuels: Yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: At least provisionally. We can pull it if we need to.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay?
Heidi Ullrich: Okay. Thanks, Sebastien.
Sebastien Bachollet: I think we have to take into consideration what Alan says about IT project, and my recommendation will be in the letter stage to have Dave meeting with ICANN IT staff to give them the keys of what he is doing in case of emergency.
Carlton Samuels: Yes, yes, yes. We will have that done. That's why we're using more open processes, open source solutions to do this. It will be given to them. It's not something that we're going to keep at all.
Sebastien Bachollet: I am fully sure about that, but it's not just it's open, it must be – we need to have somebody in the ICANN staff who is knowing that – the IT part, not the policy part. In the IT part, that something is done and they know about it and if they have question they can ask Dave about that and be able to take the lead in the next few days, if we have any trouble.
Alan Greenberg: Based on other discussions that I've taken part in, I don't think we can assume it's a given that IT staff will take this on.
Carlton Samuels: Well, let's try and see now. We're interested in automating as much of this as possible, and that's what we're trying to achieve. So, we'll work it through.
Heidi Ullrich: I'll take that as an action item, Alan, just to confirm that they will.
Sebastien Bachollet: And then maybe it will be useful for them to have it to be used in other part of ICANN. Thank you. Then let's go to the next item, the issue on how to create better ALS/RALO/ALAC relations to be discussed in Nairobi. I think it's an item for Nairobi, we don't need to discuss it more now.
Then STI minority report to be added to the PAD, I guess it was done.
Short policy briefing from ICANN staff on whether public comment setting a precedent is requested. Do you know something about that, Heidi?
Heidi Ullrich: I will have to take care of that today.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay, thank you. ALAC will not submit statement for that yet. But ALAC will prepare eye level statement on the broader issue of ICANN business model by January 19.
Alan Greenberg: Seventeenth.
Sebastien Bachollet: Yes, 17th. The point from this meeting will be used as a source of material for (inaudible) to be placed in the comment sections. Do we have somebody in charge of that, to do that and to write a first –
Alan Greenberg: I don't even remember what it is.
Sebastien Bachollet: It is the idea of single – if I remember well – single letter –
Alan Greenberg: But I don't know what the broader issue of the ICANN business model is.
Sebastien Bachollet: It's how we deal with each – because for some people it was a first time it was a request for a new gTLD to sell one letter domain names. In fact, it's not the first one, and we wanted to have this as the purpose of discussion what it means for end users selling of one letter code – sorry, one letter domain names, and whether (inaudible) going on and what it's used for, and that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It was the opportunity for us to make a proposal as we had previously on some things, but make it clear again that this is the type of thing that could generate some specific fund options that could be for Community use if (inaudible).
Alan Greenberg: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If memory serves.
Alan Greenberg: Yeah, it sounds like something we might have said.
Sebastien Bachollet: But the question is, it's an action item with no names on it and if it's from ExCom, we already have plenty on our plate.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Don't we though..
Sebastien Bachollet: But if not, who will lead this point? Because the one will need to have this document – the objections of argument during our last meeting and then to make some additional comments, I guess.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Because it does have some relevance to the world of IDNs as well, because I think it's a strong case, supportive case for the one and two characters in other scripts, perhaps we should have someone and James, or rather than just James –
Sebastien Bachollet: Yes, and may I suggest that we ask Dave and James to do something together, if Dave is agreed?
Carlton Samuels: This is Carlton. Can I say that when James sent out his on the IDN report, that was one of the suggestions that he made, that probably we should bring those two ideas together and put it all on the one advisory.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think that's the way to go.
Carlton Samuels: So, to my mind they are well ahead of it. If you read the report, it's well ahead. It might require one or two (inaudible) sentences to make it clear.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, yes and no. I think, Carlton, the difference is the historical issues, the non-IDN arguments, and the matter of the business case and potential use of funds need to be added. And whilst – I mean we do need to make sure that the IDN specific stuff goes into the IDN commentary process, I think there is parts of the IDN things that can come into our general statement. Do you see what I mean?
Carlton Samuels: Yeah, I agree, Cheryl. You've pretty much expanded what I was saying, and that's the part that's missing, the general case for the non-IDN, which are somewhat different, you are quite right.
Alan Greenberg: There is also the issue that has been pointed out in top level domains, in the Asian scripts, a single letter is a word, but in the past, for the Latin characters, we have forbidden them. It may not make as much sense to forbid them for the other ones, so they may not be a source of funds in Chinese; they simply may be regular domain names.
Carlton Samuels: Right.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And that's something that we should bring out.
Alan Greenberg: Remember, given Latin script, we only have 26 letters to work with. There's a few more pictograms.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: With far greater meaning.
Sebastien Bachollet: More money, more money.
Alan Greenberg: Okay, let's auction off everything, then.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Now, children, play nicely.
Alan Greenberg: We are playing nicely. Trying to figure out how to become domain entrepreneurs.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, I think, then, the point needs to be made, if they're for Community purpose, then the revenues should be conceded for Community uses. It's sort of our mantra on that.
Alan Greenberg: Okay.
Sebastien Bachollet: Dave, can you take that on your side and talk with James?
Dave Kissoondoyal: Yes, I'm going to talk with James and then come up with a draft, and then send it to the list.
Alan Greenberg: Great.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Send it to what list, Dave?
Dave Kissoondoyal: The Executive Committee list.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, thanks. I just get very nervous when people say "the list."
Dave Kissoondoyal: Okay.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay, then, we have – thank you for that, and I guess we can close it. We are then three sentence at least about expression of interest. It's (inaudible) issue, it has been applied, and Evan, Alan, Adam and James are supposed to come with a statement on that issue, I guess.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Now, remember, what is our endpoint on that? Carlton, what does it say on the TAD (inaudible), or doesn't it?
Carlton Samuels: Yes, the expression of interest.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That is something that will be happening. There is considerable resources being reallocated in the ICANN budget to support this activity, so it not only has a lot of the bone, Frankenstein has been created and they're actually putting the electrical power supply ready to do the voltage through the neck bolt. So, we're going to have to just sort of deal with that. It might be one that if we could have a draft for consideration just before our January meeting, an early draft, that might be good. I just don't remember the dates that were put around that, if any were.
Carlton Samuels: No, there weren't any dates put around it.
Sebastien Bachollet: And one of the questions that maybe we can ask, also, Patrick Vande Walle –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Vanda forgot that she is not on mute. Just talk over her, Sebastien.
Sebastien Bachollet: Yeah, I would like to suggest that we add Patrick Vande Walle on this, because he was part of the group and it could be a good addition to this working team on this document.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Perhaps if we're having – this work team is under the new gTLD work group, correct?
Sebastien Bachollet: Yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. So, we don't need – and Patrick is part of that, as far as I know.
Sebastien Bachollet: Yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. So, who is going to tell Patrick?
Sebastien Bachollet: I can tell him, but my concern is when you have a group of five people, if you have not a leader it will be –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Someone ping Vanda and say –
Heidi Ullrich: I have. I have.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you.
Carlton Samuels: Listen, we didn't put a list around it. We don't have (inaudible) 27th of January. But we can't do too much on revision here now, if we're going to get it in.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No, that's right. I would like to see us at our ALAC meeting having that for a final signoff.
Carlton Samuels: Okay. What I'll do is I'll send a note to the four persons who are already listed in line to make comments. And can we ask them to provide a comment by the end of next week?
Alan Greenberg: Does anyone have a record of what comments I already made, because I don't remember.
Carlton Samuels: I don't remember at all. I will have to go look –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Heidi, if you wouldn't mind pinging whoever in the world of the ICANN staff is in charge of that comment period, and just say that we'll be putting something in at the close of the ALAC meeting, which I think is a mismatch by about 24 or 36 hours.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, sorry. I was just dealing with Adigo on Vanda. It was for the –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (Inaudible) of interest.
Heidi Ullrich: Thank you.
Sebastien Bachollet: If I remember well, we don't have any comments, but they were supposed – each of them to write some comments. You were supposed to write each of you some comments, and what we need now is to have you as a team with Patrick and someone in charge of that. Maybe we can ask Patrick to do –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, to take (inaudible) on that.
Sebastien Bachollet: I will call on him tomorrow on that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you so much.
Carlton Samuels: Okay, Sebastien. So, Sebastien, you're going to call on Patrick. Would you do at the same time just remind the others, Evan and –
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay, I will do Patrick, and then when he's agreed, I will send to Evan, Alan, James and Adam. Okay.
Carlton Samuels: Okay.
Sebastien Bachollet: Next item is PAD issue as to behind schedule will develop into an ALAC statement. Yes, we already discussed that about the PAD. Direct appointment, we had a long discussion on that, the subcommittee, the white paper. It was completed by end of December, we stopped the clock and today it's the end of December.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I love it, well done. Why should we be limited by this silly guardian thing?
Sebastien Bachollet: By my clock it's midnight of December, no problem, of the 31 of December. Other item from how to discuss? Yes, what we didn't discuss during the meeting of the 22nd, we will deal with that in January. Cheryl remind us that contribution on the substantive agenda of IGF ought to be sent by middle of January.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And that is something that we do need to do, so I'll – oh, dear. I guess I'll ping the list, the public list and the working list and just do a reminder. But do we as an ALAC ExCom wish to make an affirmative in line with the comments that ICANN and myself personally have made at the last IGF meeting inasmuch as we do believe it needs to continue in a non-binding, discussive format with greater support to the secretariat? In which case I can throw that together very easily.
Alan Greenberg: Greater support to the –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Secretariat.
Alan Greenberg: Secretariat, okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And there we could – and I think that would work with our regions --make a bit of a comment on the importance of regional and local meetings.
Sebastien Bachollet: Agree with all that and I think –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Leave that one to me, then.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay. And the last point is the call for IDN working group to discuss a draft statement on IDN made by James. It says there is a mail you just sent to have – no, no. We need to obviously Doodle whatever time for this meeting. You asked me to do that.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, yeah, I saw that. I wanted to get in touch with James today to discuss his available times for the end of this week, or the Doodle for the travel call just went out. So, we could also have it, depending on that Doodle, we could also have the IDN working group call early next week, even though it's past the 8th.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, could do.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay. If it end up like the last time where just James and myself was on the call, we can have the call, but if it is to have more people, especially in the Asia Pacific region, it will be great, and then it's better to have it –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think the point of the meeting, Sebastien, that it needed to be in an Asia Pacific time.
Sebastien Bachollet: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree.
Heidi Ullrich: Could I suggest that I contact James today and depending on his response, Gisella send out the Doodle tomorrow?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, and if James doesn't know what Asia Pacific friendly times and dates are, then I give up.
Heidi Ullrich: Yeah, I'll offer (inaudible) some times.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, thank you.
Sebastien Bachollet: Madam Chair, we got through all the action items of the 22nd of December.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Excellent.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay, take care.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Now, Heidi, really discussed the TID. Is there any timelines other than those we know that have long since swooshed past us as dates of final ending that we need to know about, Carlton?
Carlton Samuels: If you go back to the page, the one that seems to be – is the final report in three character requirement and therein management. That is the only one that seems to be in that position.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: But we just discussed that meeting, and based on those dates, then –
Carlton Samuels: And it ends on the 8th of January, so I don't think – no, the one and two character, that's a different one. That's done on the 17th.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I thought James had already done three-character variant.
Carlton Samuels: Yes, he has, but we have not actually discussed it. He put it out for comment.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And there have been none.
Carlton Samuels: There have been none, right.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: In which case I'm of the – if I don't hear a noise, I hear agreement and we can put that in on time.
Carlton Samuels: As an ALAC.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: As an ALAC statement with the – it is currently under vote, which means we just need to start the vote.
Carlton Samuels: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: So, let's run it as a five-day vote, Heidi.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Starting ASAP, and that we will be within a day or two, and we might even be (inaudible) when it has to go in.
Heidi Ullrich: And, again, just to confirm, that's three character?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's the three character on the 8th.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay.
Sebastien Bachollet: I will not comment, but if I remember well during our ALAC meeting, we say that the way to go forward was to have a call, and it's why we are trying to set up this call for – it was supposed to be this first week of January, but it will be beginning of next week. I have no trouble with that except that it was not what –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Isn't that call going to do all of the character issues, three, two and one?
Carlton Samuels: Well, that was the original thing, but, Cheryl, as you pointed out, the issues for one on the Latin script set are fairly different and the history of it. It is fairly different enough to require separate attention. Do you recall?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I do.
Carlton Samuels: And I think you're right on that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Sebastien, are you saying that we shouldn't send it in on the 8th, that we will tell them we'll be sending it in after the call, whenever that may be?
Carlton Samuels: Well, no, I think we should do the three character variant, and we simply start with that as whatever that statement is. We look at it again and then make modifications as necessary for the three character.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, Carlton. Sebastien, your opinion?
Sebastien Bachollet: I guess James was willing to have some discussion on that, because at least as we do for the previous document he sent out, we had some change, some comments and some discussion in one conference call, and it was more comfortable with that way to do before to have it on the vote. Because it's still a working document.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay.
Sebastien Bachollet: But I know that there are very few comments. And, by the way, if we can have in the Asia Pacific time before the end of this week, it could be better. Like that, we can still do with the 8th and have this conference call.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. So, how about when Heidi speaks to James, she raises those issues. We have the opportunity for the draft, current draft to go to a ratification vote if James feels that is the best way forward. And if not, then we need to contact, I think it's Gabby or Bart, and say the ALAC comment will be in after XY's end date.
Sebastien Bachollet: If James is okay with the vote, voting on that document, then let's go.
Heidi Ullrich: Then that means no call, is that correct?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Go ahead?
Sebastien Bachollet: Yes.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, no call.
Carlton Samuels: If James agrees, yes.
Heidi Ullrich: I understand. Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, so we've got contingency planning, then. So, that's the only one, then, from the PAD.
Carlton Samuels: Yes, that's the only one that's immediate. We have a couple more coming up.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The luxury. The luxury of days and days ahead of us, yes. Not many days, however.
Carlton Samuels: For affirmation review, we have the expression of interest one, and the STI issues report, which we have already done. But remember for the STI report, we agreed – it was agreed, the consensus was that we were going to have draft a minority report and put it to comment again. Do you recall?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Alan, back to you. Minority report needs to go to comment?
Alan Greenberg: Yeah, it needs to. I haven't done it yet, but I guess I will do it, since I already put it on my to-do list at the top today.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay.
Alan Greenberg: Preempting the question.
Heidi Ullrich: Could I just ask a question about the DAG version 3. Where are we with that?
Evan Leibovitch: I guess it's my turn to come back.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Evan's back off mute. Thank you, Evan. Go ahead.
Evan Leibovitch: Essentially what had happened was, is we had a call out for people to come and help and not a lot have shown up. There have been a couple of people that have wanted to put forward comments on some of the specific components, but I guess – basically, I guess I have to work with what I have. So, if it means that I'm going to put out one more call on the WG3 and basically the more people we have the better it's going to look, but I'll do the best we have with what we've got.
Heidi Ullrich: So, Evan, did you say you wanted – you'll put one more announcement on to the WG3 list, or did you want another call?
Evan Leibovitch: Well, let's put another announcement out on the list saying we need to do a response.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, Evan, just the nature of the humans we seem to deal with, they actually turn up to calls, if you give them an option. Do you want to announce a Doodle and see what happens to people in the Doodle?
Evan Leibovitch: Okay, look, let's just see who shows up. I mean, we definitely – on one hand the job is a little less than we had at the summit because we've got something to work with. But at the same time, you know, there was a meeting for this. I gave a presentation, lots of people said they wanted to help out, I haven't heard from anyone.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The nature of humans is like that, which is why I'm thinking maybe the extra call and that gives them a focal point. Especially at this time of people's lives.
Evan Leibovitch: Works for me.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay.
Heidi Ullrich: So a Doodle.
Sebastien Bachollet: It's a WG3 because it's a DAG3?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No, just working group.
Alan Greenberg: No, I forget if it's three or five. It's just the one that deals with new gTLDs.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Three.
Sebastien Bachollet: It was a joke, sorry.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's all right.
Heidi Ullrich: So, Evan, this is a Doodle to that working group; is that correct?
Evan Leibovitch: Send it to the working group. Also send it to the At-Large list. I mean, we might as well find if there is anyone wants to crawl out of the woodwork and do some work on the DAG. Far be it from me to turn them down.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay. I'm going to send a note to Gisella so you and her can arrange the dates, etc.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Because obviously it needs to suit you more than anyone else.
Heidi Ullrich: Yeah, plus text, etc.
Evan Leibovitch: All right.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, thank you.
Sebastien Bachollet: And that was the name gTLD Working Group?
Evan Leibovitch: Yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. I think that's it for the PAD issues, correct?
Sebastien Bachollet: I think we need to work on something for the strategy planning, and if we –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, that's our next item.
Sebastien Bachollet: Okay, sorry.
Evan Leibovitch: If you're going to work on the strategic plan, I'll just say one more thing before I go back on mute. There already has been at the last NARALO meeting people from ICANN staff that came and addressed the region on issues about the strategic plan, and I highly recommend it to other regions to have in their call.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, we have already had Teresa on the LACRALO call and we are just waiting for her confirmation for the Community call. And I will personally be speaking with her or her assistant today to get that Doodle out by first thing Gisella this morning.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. Just wanted to make the point it was really useful for the people in our group, most of whom didn't even know there was such a thing.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, it's hugely important. Again, my concern for Asia Pacific is it's monthly meeting is after the close of date. So, I'm tempted to ask for an extension for a whole of At-Large input and encourage the individual regions, which have had an ability to work on it, to put in their stuff on time. Would that work?
Heidi Ullrich: I can ask Teresa at the same time, or I can ask Kevin, actually. Let's see who is responsible for that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, that would be great, Heidi. And the only other thing is, if we really make sure you reach out to the leadership in APRALO, it's not hard for them to put a few words together in advance of that date. They just need to be (inaudible). I really think you and Matthias who need to do that. I'm running out of a six supply at the moment.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay. I'm making a note to have Matthias do that. And, also, I just wanted to highlight that tomorrow's AFRALO call will also have Teresa.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Excellent. Excellent. Because her team has raised some very specific issues in the AFRALO list already, so they should already be thinking about what they would like to say into the (inaudible) planning. Fantastic. Do we have a Wiki page up for individual ALS and regional comments to be aggregated to, contribute to our At-Large statements? Because if we don't, we'll put one up for the call, but if we can get it up in advance of the call, then people can start making comments now.
Heidi Ullrich: I'll need to (inaudible) –
Carlton Samuels: Okay. Heidi asked the question.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It was fairly clear the purpose of the strategy planning call is to get ALS regional input and inform the ALAC view for discussion for its input. The purpose of the travel call, so we're sort of mixing R&D here in our items for discussion, which is not unrelated to strategic planning. At the moment, the purpose of the call is listed as the following: An opportunity for members of the At-Large Community to speak with Kevin Wilson, ICANN, CFO, and Steve Antonoff, and we have managed to get some dates, I believe, Heidi. Confirm if I'm wrong, that both can be available?
Heidi Ullrich: Again, Teresa has said – sorry, Kevin has said yes for certain dates and we're just now confirming with Teresa.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. On travel-related issues, and this is the important part. Including the development of return on investment parameters, prior planning of regional meetings and outreach activities, identify synergies. I don't think – I think that purpose is wide enough. Is everyone happy for that purpose to go to print?
Carlton Samuels: I don't see why not.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. Alan, at that same call, I'm assuming that you're going to be getting some feedback on your particular issues you've raised directly with Kevin and Steve by that stage?
Alan Greenberg: I don't know.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, in which case if you haven't, then I'm assuming you're going to be asking for it then.
Alan Greenberg: In our last call I suggested that Heidi let Steve and Kevin know that I'm willing to talk to them ahead of time, if they would like.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes. I haven't been upstairs yet, and I will be talking to Teresa and to the both of them.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. All right.
Alan Greenberg: I no longer remember what I wrote in it, but I'll look at it again.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Because of the amount of time we spent, and I do want to wrap up now, planning for Nairobi meeting, we do need to discuss a few things, if you don't mind. The clicking, the meeting page and schedule have been put up in the usual format. But we are already getting requests for time for people to come and speak to us, and we need to start putting out requests for briefings that we want. So, they are sort of twofold.
First of all, the NomCom would like somewhere between a minimum of 15 or 20 minutes to come and do a selling spree at us. They have requested on the Sunday. I guess it's up to us whether we give it to them on the Sunday, which I think is going to be fairly packed, or whether or not we make it part of one of our ALAC and regional meetings through the week. What's your view on what we say to the NomCom, and how much time do we give them?
Sebastien Bachollet: I am a little bit troubled with that, because I am not sure that the people who will be in the meeting for ALAC need any presentation of the NomCom. It's usual suspect they know already about that. It's not a summit, and if we need –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's why they're not getting the 50 minutes they asked for.
Sebastien Bachollet: Yes, I – then I suggest, yes, 15 minutes, 1-5, it's okay, and when it's less painful for us to have them. Because I think Sunday, if we slide the day into little issues, it will be difficult to manage. I think Sunday must be a real full day work with – and that's many pieces of work, and I prefer to have it in another place.
Alan Greenberg: Cheryl, can I ask what it is they want to discuss? Is this an advertisement for the NomCom that we should all go out and beat the bushes, or is this asking advice what we believe they should be looking for in ALAC people?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: As I understand it, it will be both. And it's the second part that is most important, as far as I'm concerned.
Alan Greenberg: As far as I'm concerned, too, and I don't think we need a lot of the rest of it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Exactly.
Alan Greenberg: But we should be prepared for the first part.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We can say thank you, mate, we have our bookmarks now, and now can we tell you what we want? And I'm about to run out of battery.
Alan Greenberg: I would say no more than 15 minutes, but, yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And at the meeting. Do you mind if I disconnect and dial back in? My battery is about to die.
Alan Greenberg: Then we don't have much choice, do we?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay.
Heidi Ullrich: Alan, this is Heidi.
Alan Greenberg: Yeah.
Heidi Ullrich: Just to confirm that you will be preparing a document or a presentation on the return on investment for the travel meeting?
Alan Greenberg: I will be?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, I think that was mentioned that you would do that. I can find the evidence where it was agreed, but I'm pretty sure that that was agreed.
Alan Greenberg: If you can point me to the evidence, if there was discussion of it in minutes into a teleconference, I would appreciate it. I don't quite remember that.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay.
Alan Greenberg: I may have remembered saying that should be done, I'm not sure I volunteered to do it.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, back. What have you decided?
Alan Greenberg: Heidi said that I had volunteered to write a return on investment document for travel support.
Heidi Ullrich: No, no, no, a briefing.
Alan Greenberg: A briefing.
Heidi Ullrich: Just that you would prepare, or you would give an introduction to the issue, how's that, during the travel call.
Alan Greenberg: I can certainly do that. It doesn't come back – it doesn't amount to much more than if we expect ICANN to be investing more money in travel, we need to justify what we believe are the benefits of doing it. I'm not sure it falls to me to specify what those benefits are.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And the other thing is, and this is more for Kevin or Steve, but I guess it's Kevin, will be using the (inaudible) room, and I would really like Kevin to set it up so he can show the people on the call what he showed us in Seoul, that drilldown in the dashboard.
Heidi Ullrich: Yeah, I remember what he did, yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Because I would like – and I'm actually happy for him to pick on me, because I'm expensive and I have no problem with that. Though I also think the Community get their value out of me. So, by using an example and telling I'm more than happy for him try and embarrass me, of how much I cost.
Alan Greenberg: How can I get them to embarrass me by the high cost of my travel?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Alan and I – how much I cost, and people are going, "Oh, heavens above," and say, now, let's assume someone replaced me, those same costs are going to stand. What criteria should we be measuring (inaudible). You know, do that sort of exercise.
Carlton Samuels: You have – just one little part you left out. They have to put a value on what you contribute.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Exactly right.
Carlton Samuels: Because if you start cutting up that chair for you, you'd be surprised. I think you'd be startled.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I'm really startled, Carlton.
Carlton Samuels: What you're doing here is high value policy work that people get paid six figures to do.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's right.
Carlton Samuels: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And I think that's a conversation we need to have, but it goes two ways. ICANN must be made aware of, well, I mean, I'm happy to tell them what I bill a day. I'm sure Alan is as well. They are getting off cheap, very cheap. But by the same token, when you pay $7,000 three times a year to bring someone in and there is not a bum on a seat around our table, that's not good enough.
Alan Greenberg: No, I agree there.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think it's that frank and free conversation that we need to have. That needs to get out to the regional leadership because that's where our embarrassments are. And rather than embarrass people, I'm happy to try and have myself embarrassed, and if Alan is willing to join me up there, that's fine as well.
Alan Greenberg: The only embarrassment I end up with is how low my billing rate is for ICANN.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Tell me about it. I don't know how ICANN might think about being classed by me as a charity, but that's pretty much what I'm doing.
Alan Greenberg: I just found out what — I just found out what babysitters earn here, and I could make more money at it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh, Alan, please. Please mention that during the call. Okay, so I think –
Alan Greenberg: Come to think of it, there may be some relationship.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, yes. Now you've started me on a whole new tack and I'm going to have to try and exercise self control now. Okay. So, I think we're pretty right with all of that. I'm most concerned that we do get meaningful strategic planning input in however from the strategic planning call, and I'm of the opinion that we're going to have to use what is said at the call for our ALAC opinion, our piece, our statement, and that's why I'd like to Wiki up sooner rather than later.
With the Nairobi meeting, though, we do have, I think, the need for a couple of briefings. We need to identify what they are, and we need to see what staff need to be brought in. What ones are you aware of? What ones do you want on our agenda, on the Nairobi schedule? At the moment we've got a blank slate, tabula rasa.
Carlton Samuels: I believe you have to keep on the STI issues. I believe we have to continue plugging away at the guidebook issues. I believe we have to continue plugging away at the strategic plan and how they intersect with the regional and the ALAC plans.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. That's more of a Sunday one, that latter one, then. I see that's fitting into the whole day workshop Sunday.
Carlton Samuels: Yeah, that's probably true.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Where the others possibly for midweek meetings. What else?
Heidi Ullrich: On that issue, would you also like to have some discussion on how the strategic plan and the AOC issues sync?
Carlton Samuels: That might be a good idea.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Good call, Heidi. Now that one that we probably should have not on the Sunday, but as a midweek topic or during the week topic, where we can actually have perhaps – so, we need to avoid a Wednesday. We would need to have, if not Peter and Janis, we would want to have at least one of those.
So, if we avoid the Wednesday, it means Janis might be available, because GAC meets on the Wednesday all day. Because by Nairobi, they will be wanting to populate their review teams, and I think we need to have a meaningful discussion about how Community input is going to be happening during this review team process. And I think that would be a worthy use of 40 or 50 minutes of our time..
Carlton Samuels: And in addition to that, might I say you see that optimization of Community as staff time. We might want to add it as a separate, distinct piece, because I think it would be good for the Community At-large to understand how the staff, you know, the workload of the staff and the things we do, how it impacts the workloads. And for us to begin to see if we can make decisions that optimize the (inaudible) –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. So, I would see that as an early midweek meeting, because we can build on our more generic Sunday stuff.
Carlton Samuels: Yeah.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, good. Okay. This is starting to flesh out. Issues that need briefing –
Sebastien Bachollet: I just wanted to take this opportunity to say that we have a new representative for one of the ISOC, European chapter, and he used to be member of the GAC. He's (inaudible), and maybe we can ask him out on some issue regarding that, because I am sure that he knows a lot on that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The other thing I'd like to try and get as a during-the-week part of our meeting, unless it has to be on the Sunday – and my preference is for it not to be on the Sunday – is I'm assuming that we will have an opportunity to further the discussions that started in the last GAC/ALAC meeting.
Now, the question there is, it has tended to be a time that suits the GAC. They meet all day Wednesday. I'd like to get – but they do meet on the Sunday as well, so we may have to go back to the Sunday. But are you happy for me to try and get a single purpose call looking about how we can further the discussions on matters of new gTLDs in the thorny areas, the morality and public order, etc.?
Carlton Samuels: Well, I think that is where we should kind of focus the meeting, see if we can – you remember some months ago, Evan raised the issue whether or not we shouldn't have like a special little committee that (inaudible) the GAC.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: But that's part of the action items that are going on. What I'm saying is for Nairobi, I think we'll need a block of time –
Alan Greenberg: Cheryl, you meant a special purpose call. Did you mean a call or did you mean –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I meant a space in the Nairobi meeting. I didn't mean a call at all.
Carlton Samuels: Okay. Well, that's what I was emoting to.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's the only time you're going to get all of the GAC there.
Carlton Samuels: Okay. That was the thing I was emoting to, Cheryl, is a special purpose.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Sorry.
Carlton Samuels: I was making that a special purpose, to see if we can find some way to get closer on this issue of public morality clause.
Alan Greenberg: Does anyone know what the status is regarding updates or whatever on the DAG, on gTLDs prior to Nairobi? Is something expected?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, I do. There will be some – there won't be a DAG 4 by then, it will be after Nairobi, but there will be some specific excerpts available for briefing. And I think we should probably, Heidi, put some placeholders in for, if there is anything out for briefing, we would want a short briefing on it in one of our meetings. Is there anything else we want briefings on, though?
Alan Greenberg: Nothing that comes to mind at the moment.
Evan Leibovitch: Just to follow-up on what Carlton was saying, and just in case I missed anything. Has there actually been any activity to talk to the GAC to set something up at this point?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The GAC will be trying to see if they can fit it onto their first meeting agenda, which is tomorrow. So, get back to me on the question.
Evan Leibovitch: Because at this point, if it's inconvenient to have a massive ALAC/GAC meeting, we want to have that, but not necessarily for this single purpose. If we can possibly just, say, have a subgroup that may have, like, three of them and three of us that sit in a room and say let's deal with this.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes. The problem is for them to form that type of committee, they have to have a meeting. They have to have a meeting to decide whether they want to actually discuss that.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And it might be that our opportunity for a work group to – a joint work group to be formed will come out of, say, 40 or 50 minutes in Nairobi.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. So, in other words, don't necessarily expect anything until then.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, I think we can get a flavor, an indication of what the GAC Committee believes is likely.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: But I actually think, yeah, they work in mysterious ways.
Evan Leibovitch: So, they're God.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And the other thing will be –
Alan Greenberg: More so that before the AOC.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah. The other thing is that there is also a strong nexus with the role of the governance in the accountability and transparency review team. And at the moment, it's impending. It's not out yet. I've seen early draft and I've given some input that was purely personal but, surprise, surprise, quoted things from the summit. That a balance between – if a group is – it equals eight or nine, then the government, nongovernment – in other words, the government reps on that review team work group and the rest of ICANN (inaudible) ISO influences should be on a one-to-two ratio. So, I said, well, you can't have it in eight, and six is too small, so it needs to be at least nine.
So, if you've got for every one government person you've got two of the rest of the world there, that type of level they're looking at right now. But that will be added to the discussion paper. In the next week to 10 days, and that will be another thing that we will have to have on our ALAC agenda, because that will be comments we will need to make.
Evan Leibovitch: Okay. Maybe I am pushing my nose into areas where it doesn't belong, but it just seems like with the OC there is a really good opportunity here to have a good relationship between the GAC and ALAC. Both of us claim to be representing the public interest in the face of all these contracted parties.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Absolutely. And, in fact, what we can do is see that – what I was referring to was a nexus between our possibilities of finding mutualism and working relationships on the matters of morality and public order, and some of the new gTLD things, including the ELI process, I would hasten to add. I wouldn't just restrict it to morality and public order. I think the ELI, because of some of the community issues, etc. –
Evan Leibovitch: Right.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: – are very important, and the GO issues as well. But, also, we will find a great deal of development of new mutualism in the AOC environment. So, it may be that we do know more than those two topics, or try and further those topics. But the AOC discussion would be quite specific to review team dynamics, and that's where our question of how does community, the edges, get input into these review processes? When I asked that question at the ICANN session in the IGF meeting, Mr. Dengate Thrush said, isn't that what I was there for, quote, unquote.
Alan Greenberg: "I" him, or "I" you?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: "I" me.
Alan Greenberg: As in him, himself?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: He, himself, said to me, "Cheryl, as the chair of the ALAC, isn't that what you --" referring to me there, there and then at a public IGF meeting, and then by default the ALAC – " are doing?" I won't go into the details of my response because it's all in transcript. But suffice it to say we saw a level of public disagreement between the chairman and myself.
Alan Greenberg: I do presume you then billed them for all your expenses going to IGF.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No, the IGF.
Alan Greenberg: But if you're representing them.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That made me very angry and it made me very concerned, because what Janis and I were talking, my question was actually to Janis. You know, I would very much like to have enough advanced planning out from the review teams so that the public and the community of public within ICANN, as well as outside of ICANN – remember, I was in an IGF meeting – can prepare themselves for the proper input, which is required, as I understood it, under the AOC. The chairman of the board's response to me was, "Isn't that what we're here for?" As in ALAC.
Now, that's not the way I read the AOC, and I think we need to make sure that we have that discussion full and frankly with the GAC so that these misconceptions about how we can be used for window dressing, or if we are, we are going to be needed to be properly supported window dressing.
Alan Greenberg: (Inaudible)
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Have it all out on the table. So, I think we do need to have these conversations in Nairobi, and that's very much why I would like to have Peter and Janis in the room for a particular purpose at about 40 minutes of meeting time, specifically looking at that input into review team roles.
All right. How much more do we need to do on Nairobi now? I don't know.
Heidi Ullrich: Cheryl, just one issue that we've spoken about before is the ALAC regional leaders issue, the ALAC/RALO/ALS workshop.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's the Sunday.
Heidi Ullrich: How much time would you like for that?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: All of Sunday.
Heidi Ullrich: All of Sunday.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It's always all of Sunday.
Heidi Ullrich: No, sorry. The issue where you wanted to have a particular talk about the At-Large review implementation issue.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh, within Sunday. I think, I think, think – well, I'll throw to my fellow ExCom. I think the implementation part that we need to do, so Sunday in two parts. One needs to focus on ourselves in terms of implementation and the other needs to focus on how we make the whole dynamic work better. And that includes macro strategic planning, linking in with macro ICANN strategic planning, regional activities and how we better run policy development input at all the various levels.
Do you want to cut that half-and-half, or one-third, two-thirds?
Sebastien Bachollet: I guess we need also to add – to finish the day, who will go where. If we do morning with inside and the afternoon with outside and we finish by, who is going where during the week.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. So, a.m. will be implementation plan. Afternoon will be the larger dynamic, and then close off with who goes where.
Heidi Ullrich: So, about one hour for that, for the allocations.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh, 40 minutes.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay.
Sebastien Bachollet: My suggestion is that if we can find a way to have a document where we can ask everybody to fill in and not going through the room, but just –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (Inaudible), Sebastian, is that what you're saying?
Sebastien Bachollet: No, I was thinking about least of the meetings during the week and, yes, like a sign-up sheet, where people could say before the meeting and even we can ask them one week before the meeting to sign where they want to go. Like that we have the list and we confirm during the meeting. We are not just going through the room and asking who will be doing that. They have to think that before.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, and we could have that running all day.
Sebastien Bachollet: Yeah, maybe one week before and they can – and the people who didn't have time will have to do it on the Sunday, yeah. If you want me to think about which type –
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If we allow 40 minutes at the end of our schedule, we can probably do it in 20.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Just to dot the I's and cross the T's.
Heidi Ullrich: Fine. I'm just concerned about the likelihood of having a hard cutoff at 6:30.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh, there's no likelihood, we will be out the door at 6:30 and on buses. The place closes at 6:30 every night. By 6:30 we have to be walking out doors and getting onto buses back to our hotels. This is not going to be like any other ICANN meeting we've had.
Sebastien Bachollet: (Inaudible), okay, great. We will have time for fun.
Alan Greenberg: Is there anything else about the process there you can share with us, by the way?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, no.
Dave Kissoondoyal: Dave Kissoondoyal here. I just ask you a question about the outreach program on Sunday.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And I just answered it. The reason – and we'll get to the outreach program. In fact, we might as well do that now. Assuming the third-party funding is found and assuming that a full-blown outreach program goes on as opposed to some smaller version and a regional showcase, which I think is a fallback position. But something will be happening.
Let's assume, Dave, that it is going to be the full-blown outreach program, which would be delightful if it can happen. Then there is going to be a need for some of that to happen on the Sunday, because the plan calls for a regional outreach meeting going on on the Sunday.
If we do the split one-third/two-thirds, and we're doing internal ALAC implementation, the review implementation activities in the morning, then I lose nothing by having the AFRALO regional outreach running in parallel.
So, if it happens, it will be happening in the morning, which is as I was planning, while we are doing internal issues. Africa will simply have to decide that at least one of its regional representatives on the ALAC is not going to be part of its outreach program during that time. Because I assume you do still want to have someone in the room.
Dave Kissoondoyal: Yeah, sure. Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: So, that's my line of least resistance. Not a lot has happened since our last meeting in the Nairobi outreach other than we have had some discussion or some reporting of discussion about cheaper accommodation options that may be – still all smoke and mirrors, as far as I can tell, however – may be able to drop what were escalating costs, more than, I would suspect, almost another third. At least not more than a third up on what the original project plan had looked for. And we are looking forward to a meeting as soon as Alice gets back so that we can discuss matters with the local host. And that, again, will allow us to move to the practicalities of next steps.
It's all very good for individuals, Tijani in particular, to have spoken to someone in the organizing committee in Seoul about the availability of cheaper accommodation. But we need that confirmed. We can't go back on hearsay. We actually have to have it from the local organizing committee, because what we're being told by the fellowship managers within ICANN is accommodation costs are already almost doubling. And I'm quite sure if there was access to cheaper accommodation, they'd be keen to know about it as well.
So, it may be that conversations that were had in Seoul since have taken over that, and we need to have our next meeting with the Nairobi outreach planning with a very firm linkage to what is happening on the ground in Nairobi. Otherwise, we are working on hearsay and conjecture.
What we have had us shown, however, is as much assistance and logistics support as is humanly possible coming from ICANN, which in the absence of cold hard cash funding, we welcome and we are now confident that if we can get funding for people to get there, then at least we will have no major challenges wrapping the logistics of the program around them.
So, it's a good news/bad news story. My personal opinion, and David, it's a personal opinion I prefer to keep within this group at the moment, is that we will file in having a full-blown Nairobi outreach meeting for the meeting No. 37 in ICANN. We will not fail to have a full-blown Nairobi – sorry – AFRALO outreach in Nairobi for the IGF after next, which is also running in Nairobi.
There is no reason why these outreach activities need to be run only in sync with an ICANN meeting. They can be run in sync with another meeting and there are more people funded in other ways to get to IGF than there are into an ICANN meeting, but that we will still be running something significant. And by that I mean a regional showcase at the very least. Africa must be seen, and the ALSs must be seen as a jewel in ICANN's crown while we're there at Nairobi.
So, that's my personal, that's my fallback position. That is certainly something I think prolifically and financially we can get away with. But I would see this, then, as the beginning of effective strategic planning for what is a very good design and a very necessary procedure to happen at the next major event within East Africa.
The other advantage of doing it that way is that we can ensure that the comments that go into the next strategic plan and funding cycle take the costs into account, and we would have better chance of getting co-funding or at least significant funding from the next round. And I did sort of preempt that when people started talking to me about that.
So, I think something is going to happen. It's going to be good. Is it going to be all singing, all dancing, as wonderful as we want it to be? Well, miracles in funding may happen, and if it does, then we've got the logistics that we know will work. If it doesn't, we have to do something. Okay?
Dave Kissoondoyal: Okay.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And I will be raising all of these ugly truths at our next meeting. All right? Vanda, come off mute, dear, and tell us if there is anything we need to know about from the board.
Carlton Samuels: Listen, I have to go in another few minutes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, and I want to finish. So, Vanda, anything from the board meeting coming up? Star, whatever, star, 7 to unmute. Vanda? Okay, I guess she'll tell us on Skype if there is or coming. And the matter optimization of Community and staff time, can I suggest that we have a serious think about this? Thanks to things like the expression of interest process going to cost, going to be put into the costs for ICANN's current budget allocations, belts are going to be tightened right across ICANN. And that means it's going to affect us. It means that our staff are going to be working harder with less at a time when we are asking more and more of them.
And one of the things we can do so that they can meet their budget cuts is to perhaps take more of the work group calls onto ourselves. In other words, to have community scribes and to have calls that are facilitated but not with ICANN At-Large staff actually sort of being there throughout the whole thing.
We need to consider that, and I'd like to put that onto our thinking list for further discussion either on the list or at our next call. And that's the next thing we need to do.
This is technically a catch-up call from the end of December, so we do need to have a January ExCom meeting Doodle go out. And I'm wondering when you would like to see that happen? In the week of the 14th or what?
Alan Greenberg: I was going to suggest February.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Ha-ha.
Alan Greenberg: I'm sorry. These marathon three-hour meetings get to me.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, yeah, well, an hour of it was on another activity. The week of the 14th or what?
Carlton Samuels: It's going to be extremely bad for me.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: All right. What's better for you?
Carlton Samuels: The following week would be better, and that's running into the ALAC call week.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, it's got to be as far away from the ALAC meeting as possible. The ALAC meeting runs on the Tuesday.
Alan Greenberg: It's got to be at least a week before, doesn't it?
Heidi Ullrich: So, the week of the 18th.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The week of the 18th? How is that for you, Carlton?
Carlton Samuels: I could do 18th, I think.
Heidi Ullrich: Keep in mind that staff – the US staff have the 18th off.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And why does that happen?
Heidi Ullrich: That is Martin –
Carlton Samuels: Martin Luther King's birthday.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I'm as ignorant to the purpose of the 18th as you are of the reason my public holiday is on the 26th, that's all.
Heidi Ullrich: But just to go back to the issue of optimization of Community and staff time, one of the other issues that I wanted to bring up under that item is that given the current situation within the At-Large staff, i.e., that we are one person short, if not 1.5, due to the budget issues, etc., that we would like to have where not all At-Large staff are on all of the calls. So, that's why, for example, Matthias is not on this call.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes. And, for example, if we're doing something on the 18th, well, then, it's all these whichever is in the appropriate time zone.
Heidi Ullrich: So, we could have it on the 18th.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes. There is no reason – yes, if the 18th works for Carlton, then we just do it with a Doodle that works in time zones where Matthias or Gisella or someone is available.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, that's fine.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: All right. So, Doodle for the 18th, Carlton, all right for you?
Carlton Samuels: Yes, that's fine.
Heidi Ullrich: For the week of the 18th.
Carlton Samuels: The week of the 18th, the week of the 18th. I'm going to be –
Alan Greenberg: If we wanted it a week before the meeting, the ALAC meeting has got to be the 18th or the 19th.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, they are the two days, 18th or 19th.
Carlton Samuels: Yeah. Well, I think I would be good for those days.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Fantastic. Okay. Well, we just need to Doodle for that and we need to be very aware that our overworked but nevertheless greatly appreciated At-Large staff working with less, not more and that's not going to change in the short term.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, thank you. And that each Community call and each ALAC call and ExCom call produces a lot of action items for both you and Community, but as well as us.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Absolutely.
Heidi Ullrich: And we do want to stress that we absolutely love what we're doing, but in order to serve you and the Community in the best way, we need to have time to do that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Absolutely. And everything we're trying to do is trying to improve that, but I must say it's something that I'm hoping the other end of Nairobi, we will have a much clearer pathway as to how things can be done and have done in a way that we can work smarter, not harder. And that goes for staff as well as the Community.
Heidi Ullrich: Thank you, Cheryl.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's all right. Okay. Well, that's it. Heroic effort yet again, ladies and gentlemen, but I think the amount of time we spent on the white paper was hugely important. And I do hope you'll at least mentally think you've done two meetings, not just one. Thank you all. Talk to you soon. Bye.
