Attendance: Darlene Thompson, Glenn McKnight, Joly Macfie, Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Gareth Shearman, Allan Skuce, Avri Doria, Alan Greenberg, Evan Leibovitch, Eduardo Diaz, Ganesh Kumar, Garth Bruen
Staff: Seth Green, Gisella Gruber, Matt Ashtiani
Apologies: Seth Reiss, Gordon Chilcott, Beau Brendler
As Beau Brendler was ill, Darlene Thompson chaired the meeting.
A G E N D A
NARALO AGENDA: 12 September 2011
Standing Issues
1. Roll Call – Staff (2 min)
2. Review of summary minutes and action items from 8 August 2011 – Darlene (5 min)
Action items:
a) Wording for non-performing ALSs - Darlene and Secretariats
b) Statement on Pre-Registration – Beau: On agenda below
c) Video - Glenn and Joly: On agenda below
d) Survey - Beau, Glenn, Allan: On agenda below
e) Puerto Rice ccTLD general update – Eduardo: On agenda below
3. Open Public Consultations – Darlene (10 min)
See At-Large Policy Advice Development Schedule
See At-Large Policy Development wiki page
Olivier: PEDNR (Post Expiration Domain Name Recovery) – response by ALAC is being formulated. ALAC is taking a vote on this matter and the vote closes shortly.
Phase II of Public Comment Enhancement – Cheryl drafting
Revisions to Conflict of Interest Policy – Carleton drafting
WIKI pages are up and drafts are posted
Proposed agenda Items
4. JAS WG draft Final Report – Evan, Olivier (10 min)
- Before Sep ALAC meeting, NARALO to give feedback to regional ALAC members
See JAS WG Final Report draft 20110909
Olivier/Seth Green: The final opportunity for input is due today. They will then put in the final touches and then Karla Valente will be sending it to the chartering organizations (GNSO, At Large) to submit. They’ve arranged for Christina Rodriguez (ICANN head of translations) to be standing by to translate it into French and English in a week’s time which is extremely quick. There will be a JAS Webinar on Monday, Sept. 19, 2011 to update the community on this matter.
5. Bottom-up action procedure (re compliance) – Darlene (5 min)
We needed a better defined procedure on how to bring things forward to the ALAC. NARALO worked on this on-line and the procedure has now been posted to our WIKI page along with our organizing documents.
6. Statement on Pre-Registration – Darlene (for Beau; 5 min)
This situation was easily resolved by an e-mail, coordinated by Evan, sent into Scott Pinzon, making him aware of what was happening. He was not and asked for specific examples of registrars engaging in this practice which were provided to him. ICANN is pursuing this matter with the individual registrars in question.
It was noted that we meet various ICANN staffers at each ICANN meeting and this is really opening up the roads to better communications. This matter was dealt with expeditiously without having to draft a formal request to ICANN.
So this issue was brought to ICANN as an education issue and a consumer issue to the staffers involved, rather than NARALO having to churn out an entire policy dealing with the issue.
This experience illustrates: 1) how At Large can be of positive use to ICANN and have a direct effect on how things are being handled on a day to day basis and 2) how the lines of communication between the two groups are improving.
7. Update on NARALO video project – Glenn, Joly (5 min)
See: Video project wiki.
Glenn/Joly: Glenn and Joly have been working together to look at directorial approach and messaging. Its been hard to keep it short and interesting. Joly was filming Olivier today. Glenn will be bringing his A/V equipment to Dakar in order to get short, little clips from people. They have nailed down an approach and if anybody is interested, please check out the WIKI site.
Seth Green: Heidi and Seth were in touch with Juan on staff. The approach for spending is that the ICANN staff will be the one to actually spend the money. Staff will have to liaise with the NARALO reps to decide what should be spent then the expenses will go through the normal ICANN invoice process to get paid. He can get further guidelines as to what would and would not pass the process.
Joly: Will Glenn be able to get paid for the time he has put into this?
Darlene: Who will decide what are reasonable expenditures? Should this have to go through the chair/secretariat of NARALO to ICANN or directly from the working group? The RALO will have to decide on this.
Alan: This will raise a lot of red flags with ICANN. Traditionally, funds like these are paid for outside services and out-of-pocket costs. They generally aren’t used to funnel money to the volunteers in the group. This should have been approved ahead of time if this was going to be requested.
Heidi: We really need to get the details of what kind of expenses are appropriate from Juan and get it to the group.
Avri: Wasn’t there a budget prepared ahead of time that was approved? If a volunteer is doing extra work in their professional capacity (as opposed to going out to another professional) within the budget, what is the issue in them getting paid?
Darlene: We had an over-all budget for the cost of the entire project but did not have it broken down into separate line items.
Alan: The red flag is not that a volunteer is getting paid for professional services, the red flag is that this is something that was not cleared ahead of time.
Darlene: Yes, NARALO could then be seen as proposing projects for which our ALSs or individuals will gain direct monetary benefit. We need to look into this more.
8. Update on survey of users on NARALO policy – Beau, Glenn, Allan (5 min)
This project has not yet been started. Joly had a comment that ISOC just had a webinar a week ago where they are doing a survey. They are in the middle of a three year process in doing this survey. Joly suggested to them that perhaps we could work together on this and take the At-Large survey and incorporate it into the larger Internet Society survey so that we could present them with a set of questions. The channel has been opened.
Darlene: Perhaps Joly could ask as a liaison on this with ISOC. Joly agreed.
Heidi: The 2010 At-Large survey collected a lot of quality information. It may be a useful guide as we go forward with our own survey. Staff will be very happy to help us with the Big Pulse system if we decide to go that way.
9. Update on Puerto Rico ccTLD – Eduardo (5 min)
Nothing much has happened since the last time we discussed this. It is in the hands of the courts so this will take time. There may be open hearings in the next month or so and PRISOC plans on attending.
Last meeting we were discussing that IANA allowed the redelegation of the ccTLD outside of the University of Puerto Rico. In a NARALO perspective, we should be asking IANA under what terms they allow this to happen. This is how the professor was able to move the ccTLD out. Beau, Eduardo and Alan are going to write something up on this so that we can send it from NARALO to IANA. This was also brought up to the Department of Commerce and they were going to investige it but nothing has happened yet.
10. NARALO to contribute ideas re Registrar collaborations via wiki pages – Olivier (5 min)
ALAC has been having meeting with Registrars at each of our face-to-face meetings and one of the more recent discussions and two things were discussed: one was for At Large to come up with ideas for future ALAC/Registrar meetings, the other for joint educational materials to be developed by At-Large and Registrars that would lead to a vendor neutral website (not ICANN not Registrars), aimed at people that want to register a domain name.
Alan: Why shouldn’t it be on the ICANN web site? Olivier: The ICANN web site isn’t user friendly and having to go on there may just confuse those wanting to register a domain name. It should be under a different name than that as it wouldn’t fit under www.ICANN.org. Alan disagrees and thinks that it most definitely should be viewed as part of ICANN. There are also the optics of whether ICANN is standing up to its responsibilities or not and so should be taking part in this type of effort and should be seen to be doing so. There is also the matter that if you want to complain about a registrar, you are taken out of the ICANN website to another site (which happens to be a wholly-owned subsidiary) but it gives people the feeling that ICANN doesn’t care about this sort of thing. Olivier: This should be discussed in Dakar so that we can spend the time it takes to discuss this and so that the other regions can take part in it, too.
Please look at the WIKI pages below and give our inputs into the process. We can then take this to the Registrars and start drafting something up.
- Ideas for future ALAC-Registrar meetings
- Ideas for the content of educational materials to be developed by At-Large & Registrars
11. NARALO communication needs – Olivier (5 min)
- NARALO to give feedback to ALAC/ExCom on its (i) communication needs and (ii) potential assistance in At-Large collaborations with ICANN Communications
Evan and Olivier have been working on the communication needs with Scott Pinzon. This is so that NARALO can put in the input to the ALAC and then to the ExComm. We need to figure out how At Large can best make its point to ICANN without churning policy through the usual channels. Some of what we work on is education and not just policy. If there are consumer issues that are educational issues that we can raise, those are the kinds of things that this conversation is trying to stimulate (this revolves around the issue of pre-registration above and how it was resolved).
12. Any other business – Darlene (2 min)
Reminder of e-mail sent to the list of Sept. 2, that we are still looking for someone from NARALO to participate in the DSSA WG since Eric stepped down. If interested, please forward and we will nominate you to the ALAC for this.
Welcome to Eduardo as our new ALAC rep. Eduardo will be taking this seat at the end of the Dakar meeting.
Welcome to Ganesh Kumar, our new ALAC NomCom rep.
Evan: Reminded everybody that ALAC and ExCom meetings are open and they are always looking for more people to share the load on ICANN policy or educational matter. Also, if you are having difficulty understanding any ICANN policy issues, please contact any ALAC member or Beau or Darlene and they will help out. Olivier: Reminds people that although ALSs just get one vote but they can have multiple people taking part in different ICANN activities and working groups. Alan: Having more than one participant in any given ALS would be welcome.
Joly: He hasn’t yet received his promised brochures. Darlene/Heidi: They are just going to print now. ICANN decided to re-print all of the brochures so they needed to get budget approval for that. They just went to the printers last week and they will send them out as soon as they receive them back.
Evan: In NARALO we have unaffiliated members. They decide who will represent them and that person then votes on their behalf. Eric Brunner-Williams used to hold that post but he resigned so we need someone to take his place. Darlene: Agrees and is going to send the unaffiliated members a list so that they can communicate with each other and decide who this should be. Alan: Alan would be willing to serve.
Evan: Wishes to express regrets to Gareth as he will not be able to attend the Dakar meeting for a proper send off. Darlene: We really appreciate all of the work that Gareth has done over the last two years.
Evan: Wishes to welcome Garth Bruen to Dakar who will be taking Gareth’s travel spot and looks forward to discussions with him there. Garth may also be able to help with recruitment.
