GISELLA GRUBER: We’ll get the call started. I’d like to welcome everyone today on the ALAC Sub-Committee on Outreach on Thursday the 13th of December at 18:00 UTC. On today’s call we have Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Dev Anand Teelucksingh, Juan Manuel Rojas, Victor Ndonnang, Anupam Agrawal, Silwia Rudnik who will be joining us shortly, Wolf Ludwig. We have apologies noted from Sala Tamanikaiwaimaro, Eduardo Diaz, Yuliya Morenets and Olivier Crepin-Leblond.
From staff we have Silvia Vivanco, Matt Ashtiani, Heidi Ullrich and myself Gisella Gruber. I hope I haven’t left anyone off the roll call, and I’d also like to just remind everyone to state their names when speaking for transcript purposes, thank you. Over to you Cheryl.
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Thank you very much Gisella, it’s Cheryl Langdon-Orr for the transcript record. In fact it’s one of those times when we’ll all be very pleased to be saying things like Cheryl Langdon-Orr or our own name each time we go to speak. Because as you will see from the center of your screen if you are in a Adobe Connect room as well as on audio, one of the things we will be looking at today is in fact a transcript record. And it is very important particularly for these calls, which is – welcome Roberto; delighted that you’re joining us here, this is very important for us.
If we have something as this committee is aspiring to, which is to act as an integration, facilitation and information sharing point between the regions, then we will want to have appropriate and accurate access to agreements and information. We as a group will be going to the rough transcript record, I would suggest, with great frequency. Yes, the minutes of our meetings will reflect that it’s high level discussions and any outcome plans and resolutions, but it will often be for us to go back and see exactly what someone has said or someone has indicated if possible for some activity in one of our regions or ALS areas that we will be going to the transcript record.
And so you’ll need to get very used to doing two things. First of all, even though these calls may not be routinely interpreted, there will be times when we will be working in other languages. And we use live, real human intervention for the interpretation services, and then it’s very important to pace what you say. The recordings, the mp3’s that are taken via the audio bridge that many of you are connected through, is also part of our formal records.
And so, as an Australian of course I always find it difficult to speak in English, but regardless of what are language you are attempting to communicate in, try and use language which is going to interpret well and use it at a speed which will allow interpreters, or in this case people listening to the recordings, to know exactly what we are saying and that there is some vague sense of sentence and intent obviously being drawn out of what we are saying.
The last thing I’d like to do, and I know this is a bit wordy but I want it on the record, is that if anyone, and it may be from time to time because of plans or potential activities which might have contract or other things being planned that we may have to speak off the record. For example, we would not want on the record a potential for an activity which would have some significance on the local community or on us all that may not in fact come to pass. So it may be that any of the members of this committee working group may wish to put up there hand or type into a chat or send an email and say “I would like us to now go in the camera” – is the term that is often used, particularly in the US.
If we do go what’s called in camera, in other words the recordings will be stopped, the transcripts will be ceased and we will continue in what was effectively a private conversation, which may mean that some material that could be considered either confidential or commercial in confidence can be discussed. We will work under what is called “Chatham House Rules,” which means at the end of such an in camera discussion everyone has agreed that what is said during that in camera discussion can be referred to, providing the group does agree to refer to it, but no one is going to be attributed to it.
So you can make a report to the record once you come out of an in camera session. It’s appropriate to say, for example, “it was discussed that a national conference may be held in a European country yet to be disclosed for the record,” and we leave it at that. But that’s the type of example. So the reason I’m taking such an amount of time as we get started is that if a particular working group is going to be acting on behalf of a very large group of people we will have some people who will simply speak to one or more of you and you will be bringing information to us to share and to benefit from, but it may be that we invite guests in from time to time to talk to us or to brief us.
It may also be that we have a number of ad hoc or temporary local committees or activity groups going on. For example, as we go towards the ICANN meeting in Beijing I would think that it would be quite reasonable that we would have a number of local community members, ALS members, other parts of business and other constituencies interested in ICANN all coming together and somehow interacting with us as we coordinate outreach opportunities while the ICANN meeting is held.
Now that will mean that there will be a lot of newbies, a lot of people who work normally in perhaps very different ways then we are necessarily used to in ICANN, and we need to set up our expectations very, very carefully. There will also be competing interests. And because there will be competing interests we will invoke a set of behavioral rules which will have expectations for courteous and thoughtful interaction whenever we agree or indeed disagree on how we might go forward on some outreach.
Outreach is very much the cold face of how we build the reputation of our At-Large movement within ICANN, and indeed, ICANN itself. Because what we will be touching is the lives of the community, the decision makers, the local government, the national governments and of course many of the industry and lobby groups, which we do seek to have influence in ICANN and also have ICANN influence. Therein lies today’s lesson, but it is now on the record.
What I’d like to do is let you all know that that’s probably the longest part of today’s call. If you have any problems with agreeing with the ground rules we can discuss that later and we certainly will, staff will collect a number of things such as how to run accepted code of conduct for interactions the At-Large community and the ALAC specifically have adopted; for example, guidelines from the ICANN Ombudsmen on a number of issues, they will be accumulated around our webspace.
What we’re going to do today is have a relatively quick touch base on what happened in Toronto, look at the couple of action items, delightfully which will get us very, very quickly through today, but will commit us to a meeting in the near future. And then have a look at our plans for when we really will start our work, which will be early in the 2013 calendar year, and indeed ongoing. So with that, I would just like to check with Gisella, have we got any technical problems that we need to know about or can we just jump in?
GISELLA GRUBER: Sorry Cheryl, this is Gisella. No technical problems, thank you.
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Okay, it’s just I saw all sorts of things happening with Adigo codes and things and I thought we might have been losing lines and looking to connect people. Okay now, if you draw your attention, if you’re in the Adobe Connect Room you will see we are on page 11, although we might move to page 12 fairly soon, of a some 32 page transcript from our meeting in Toronto. I wanted to bring this to your attention for two reasons, first of all, for those of you who’ve not worked in a At-Large Advisory Committee Work Group or Sub-Committee for some time or perhaps ever before, and I’d like to think that we will be getting people engaged in this group who are newbies and may not have worked in this way.
Everything you are going to say will be taken down and will be recorded. If you are not comfortable with that go back to what I suggested earlier – you may in fact request to have things taken off the record. But recognize that quite literally we have a transcript record of what we say. Which means if I can’t say my name properly and I go, “Whoops, I’m sorry; I just misstated my name”; it will be there on the ICANN website as part of the transcript forever. Well, until they lose the paperwork I guess.
So please have a little look at this transcript record. You will see it is verbatim unless something technical has happened and then you will get things like “background noise” or “inaudible” or “applause,” which happens rarely in the meetings I run, but perhaps I should aspire to that early next year. I wanted to draw your attention, and I’d like you to take your time to read this transcript, but I wanted to draw your attention to a couple of things.
First of all those of you who do not have English as a first language will be delighted to know that from ICANN meetings, and when we have interpretation, we also have transcripts in the languages that are being interpreted. So for this 32 page document, which is linked off your agenda on the Wiki page, you’ll find English, French and Spanish; I believe they are the only three, I could be wrong. So you can read in the leisure of your own language. Thank you very much for popping up some of those standard pieces as well, thank Heidi; that’s terrific. Those expectations or standards of value or something; I want to make sure we start with here.
And Matt you’ve just popped up the note for the Toronto meeting there. One of the things that we covered off in our Toronto meeting, and we were delighted to have I think yes all of the regional vice presidents of global partnerships in the room then, was of course the Latin American and Caribbean Outreach Program. We will be working with each of the geographic regional outreach programs very closely, so you will indeed need to keep, if you are a regional representative or someone, as small group of you are trying to cover what is happening in your region and you happen to represent into our committee, you are going to have to keep your finger on the pulse.
You’re going to have to watch closely what other material and meetings are happening that relate to outreach, and help funnel or send those pieces of information into us. We have the cooperation however of the wonderful global partnerships staff, and Heidi and her team will be in fairly close contact with them, so I’m hoping that our job will be to pick up the things that are not necessarily ICANN sourced and ICANN based.
But in page 11 and 12 of your transcript we have an example of part of what Rodrigo was able to share with us, which was early planning, but a very exciting planning for Latin America and Caribbean. If we go to page 12, and I think I’ve got the synchronizing control, so hopefully you’re all looking at the bottom of page 12 now and this is pretty much where I want to start. The most important thing that I believe we agreed to is that with the formation of this Outreach Sub-Committee we have a very timely opportunity to start mapping the requirements from all of the different initiatives that are coming both from ICANN, as it says in this transcript, but of course also to ICANN; because we need to be aware of what’s happening in the rest of the world outside of just the naming and numbering.
There are other internet and internet dependent activities we might want to know about. Our own is to gain synergies and to try and avoid overlapping and duplication of things. If we do anything we need to do that; we need to help intelligent resource use. And more importantly, I think, to begin with, as we move into 2013, over the next few weeks you’re all going to be cast with looking at what you know is going to be happening in the next 12 to 18 months and beyond. We need to map opportunities.
I’m going to encourage you to read through these transcripts. It’s more wordy than is normal because it was a meet and greet and beginnings. Quite often our minutes and our transcripts and our notes are much briefer than that, but it will give you a good flavor of what our lofty intentions are. Matt, I think we also need to mention to them, and I don’t know whether it’s possible for you to take this pdf and link it for us for our record. At the end of this meeting in Toronto we had a presentation which was, it related to outreach because it was talking about the City gTLDs.
I don’t believe that we should treat it as any more than an information exercise whereby the future potential for things like City gTLDs may be a resource for us to use in the future. So Matt, if I could ask your, I guess it would be you, to grab this pdf and carve it up so that the presentation on City TLDs is segregated. And then on our Wiki space what we hold is in fact the transcript up until the end of the WCIT training presentations that were given by Nigel and Olivier. I think that would be more appropriate. So there is an action item on our record there.
If I can now just take you to the next link in the agenda, which is the not too many, we’ll be delighted to know, action items. There is two action items. The first one is completed, although I will ask Matt to perhaps take us to that page if possible so we can all have a look at the product of the Baku workspace. And I’m also going to ask Matt to speak to the Baku meeting just briefly – I’ll wait till he juggles all this other technology first – for two reasons.
Matt was the rock upon which we all built our foundations and our buildings for Baku. He was an integral and essential part of the whole of the ICANN presentations in Baku asking as the staff support to the Board as well as micromanaging all of us difficult people, and ensuring that the outreach activities through the booth in the village worked, for what I thought certainly from my biased point of view, extremely well indeed.
But if there’s a glitch he’ll know about it; if there is something we could have done better he’ll know about it. This workspace was created as a space for us to capture what was going on at a number of levels at Baku, so that’s been done. And the second one, and I’ll filibust while Matt is grabbing up that page, is one that we need to do. And that is there’s a plan for us to have a follow-up to the WCIT and we’ll be rescheduling a webinar, it says to December, I think we now need to recognize that December is rapidly getting out of our control and moving on to January.
So I’d like to ask Heidi and probably Gisella when and how do we think we might meet that second action item. Thank you.
HEIDI ULLRICH: Cheryl this is Heidi. I’ve been in touch with Mandy of the global stakeholder engagement team and they are going to plan, it’s either going to be a GSE webinar on post-WCIT activities or what the outcome was of the WCIT. Or it’s going to be just for At-Large. But that will be in early January.
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Terrific okay. So if we can reset our expectations, and out of this meeting modify that action item to a fresh one, and actually as an action item, really more of a note, we’re not going to be setting it up. As you said it’s probably more organized in January, but if possible can we make sure Silvia looks to what commitments some of her regions will be having? Because for example, getting anyone in some of our Asian countries to do anything can be quite problematic. There are a lot of learner festivals and things that go on and some of those have quite specific requirements for family commitments.
So we just need to watch the timing of those things fairly closely. So Silvia you might need to have a close look at that as well. Well that’s got us now to what I think is sort of half way through the agenda. I did jump over however the very important thing of item three – confirmation of membership; it’s something that we don’t necessarily always do in work groups and subcommittees in ALAC. But what we’re going to allow, and indeed encourage, is two levels of membership in this activity.
We’re going to have a core group, which I trust is you lot and a couple more, and that is that they’re the people who are going to be keeping things going and asking pretty much as a cross-regional executive team on this. It’s our job to make sure that the lofty goals of this group are actually getting achieved. But we’re not going to be a closed group. People can be either a full participant, and if you’re a full participant guess what; you’ll probably end up with a job and you’ll certainly end up with responsibilities.
And you’re likely to be used in your region, sub-region, nation state or local area as a focal point for activities as we go into participation and planning. So choose wisely if you want to be a full participant. You might find someone however that you believe would make an excellent participant as well, and feel free to bring them along. But we’ll have a second layer, which are observers. It might be a way of getting people in and understanding what we are aiming to do without scaring them off from a commitment and time commitment outside of our meetings.
But it also means that we can have a wider number of people either listening to our calls, reading our Wiki’s obviously, but also on our mailing lists so that ad hoc activities can be managed as well. Can I ask is there anyone on this call who believes they are not to be listed as a full participant? Is there anyone on this call who wishes to tell the staff that in fact they’re fascinated by the concept of having an outreach subcommittee but they don’t want (inaudible) involved… And whoever’s just joined needs to mute their speakers on their laptops or computer.
Okay, go ahead Roberto. Hopefully you are not telling me you don’t want to be a full participant. Because if you don’t want to be a full participant I’m going to sulk.
ROBERTO GAETANO: I was just raising a point. My understanding is that by “full participant” we mean one person per ICANN region and there are already a couple of people from my region who are very well qualified to be full participants. So I don’t mind taking any responsibility. I don’t mind taking work. But I don’t want to see this as a sort of competition on who is going to be the flag holder. So I’m willing to work, but I’m also willing to be an observer and that to be my contribution that implies something, some role or position or status or whatever. I think I made myself clear on that. I’m willing to work, but if there’s somebody else, if there’s only one flag holder per region, then I’ll decline and I’ll let somebody else to go on.
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Thank you Roberto. It’s Cheryl Langdon-Orr back again for the transcript record, and can I just say, escape is unlikely from the responsibility. You’ve had far too much experience with us and/or through to the ICANN Board where you served as vice-Chair for so long. It’s at this stage with a small group I’m certainly happy to have all of listed as full participants. There is an out clause for those of you, anyone who does not wish to be, and certainly for future people, but at the moment the baseline is to have at least one from the ALAC per region, and one from the region.
Notice I’m saying the region, not just the RALO because it may be that the Regional At-Large Organization, they all have different models of management and executive; they may wish to specifically appoint someone to us. And where that’s happened we expect that person to be a full participant, but they may also just send someone as a liaison. So we’ll be building this ship as we sail it, and we certainly just want a system where people can say clearly whether they’re here representing their region or indeed the ALAC, or whether they’re here representing their interest in outreach, and that might be two very different things.
So welcome back Roberto, and now I’d like to go to Victor; over to you. If you’re muted you need to use star…
VICTOR NDONNANG: Okay thanks. Victor Ndonnang, I’m speaking from Cameroon. I think that in the (inaudible), full participation or full participants talk about how we (inaudible) to the subcommittee. And I think that I have [said] the things if we just have one or two… I’m sure that if we just have one person from the African region for us, I would like to be a full participant myself. Let ICANN be more closer to our community, and I hope more people join this subcommittee later. I have time to be (inaudible) so I will continue at my region something to make ICANN more global. Thank you.
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Thank you very much Victor, wise words indeed. It’s Cheryl again for the transcript record. And this has raised a very important point as far as I’m concerned. When we’re looking at the areas as geographically large and diverse, as both Africa and Asia, it strikes me that to say we will only have one or two people representing is probably somewhat farcical. Certainly in Asia Pacific and Oceana where obviously my experience and skill set is strongest, we would perhaps even want for some times in the future to have sub-regional representation.
What I’m saying is at this stage we are flexible and open but we do have minimums; we want all regions represented and we want those regions represented both at the ALAC level and at the regional level, whether that is within an ICANN At-Large RALO structure or not we’re a little bit less fussed about. But yes we certainly do need more from a number of our regions and I would suggest that as we move to Beijing we should see a small and possibly temporary swelling of the numbers of some people who will be out of Asia Pacific who will be specifically be focusing on Beijing and Beijing events.
We might see the same thing happening again in Asia Pacific as the next IGF starts to be planned and activities need to be worked on for the meeting of the IGF in Bali. But where the next international meeting or opportunity is we might be needing people specifically from Lithuania, who knows. Okay, so that’s taking me back to number three. What do you now, this is where you all get to actually start work, what do you all believe should be this groups priority activities over the next six months?
We’re not going to take 20 minutes, we’ll only take about five or ten minutes on this. Because it’s from this that we need to build our next steps, in other words what type of facility do we need, do we need shared calendars; do we need spreadsheets so people can put up opportunities for us to look at; do we have specific dates and places and opportunities that we all know about now, and I suspect the answer to that is yes, but then we need to decide how we’re going to capture them and of course prioritize them. Wolf, I’m sure Europe has plans; would you care to share?
WOLF LUDWIG: Yes. It’s Wolf Ludwig for the transcript records. I can only speak about preliminary planning of EURALO for the next year. And one of our highlights for outreach will be the next European dialogue on internet governance; what will be convened the beginning of June in Lisbon. And this goes in line with our next General Assembly. So we will have our General Assembly in the eve of EuroDIG and we hope we can mobilize most of our members to come to Lisbon and to use the European dialogue with approximately, again another 500 participants for networking and outreach.
And this is one of the best opportunities we may have, otherwise we are getting more involved in the work with the Council of Europe and the European Internet Foundation. And this offers us a lot of opportunities for additional networking, for additional contacts. And we will start having, at the beginning of the year, other stakeholders or other groups, meeting them and then we need to discuss and decide on what it is necessary to be present or what events we can follow remotely. That’s our planning at the moment, thanks.
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Thank you Wolf; this is Cheryl back again for the transcript record. Wolf has given us a perfect example of the type of snapshot in sharing that I trust not only our meetings, but our Wiki and our mailing lists will reflect in the future. I’m not going to do a round robin with those of us now but if there’s anyone else who has something else as large and significant and as important as what Wolf has shared in their region, feel free to put your hand up and share it now.
But what I’d like to do is make sure we have an appropriate repository to capture these opportunities. Whoever is shuffling the papers or eating their lunch needs to put themselves on mute. To mute you use star six. Wolf, I know that’s your mid-year and your primary event, but you’ve also got other opportunities with smaller, well not necessarily small meetings, still significant meetings happening. I think you’ve got something in February happening in Paris haven’t you.
WOLF LUDWIG: Yes. Wolf Ludwig for the transcript record again. Of course we are always following the IGF consultations, which normally take place in Geneva, exceptionally in February; they will take place in Paris. And Sandra Hoferichter and I, we are already booked for the next IGF consultations. So we also have close relations with [MAC] members. And we follow-up whatsoever opportunities show up and according to our capacities we try to send at last one of us to such events. In many cases, for example, in the academic field, Wolfgang Kleinwachter, who is also a member of EURALO; he takes part in many academic conferences.
So we also, due to lack of personal capacities, we have to diversify a little bit our structure and we have to find as many people as possible who can help with outreach. And therefore I’m extremely pleased that Roberto is back at EURALO again, and Roberto has splendid experience and expertise. He can also help and assist in any outreach activities of the region.
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Indeed, I put up a little round of applause there when you mentioned us getting our clutches back on to Roberto’s talents and skills. I’m very excited about that myself. Are there any other people on the call who have similar, area aware of any similar plans of their region? I’ve mentioned a couple obviously looming at us from Asia Pacific, but they’re all pretty much in the international end of the spectrum. Any other things that people want to bring forward now by way of example, because if not I’d like to move to how we’re going to manage these bits of information.
Not hearing anyone of seeing anyone frantically waving at me on the Adobe Room; let’s move to that. We’ve covered off a couple of examples of international activities, we’ve mentioned ICANN meetings, we’ve mentioned internet governance forums, we’ve mentioned I would think what would be ITU plans as plenipots coming and all that sort of things. But these are the big ticket items, these are the ones that most people can probably find out and know about – yes you’re so right Roberto, your spider sense.
For the transcript record, Roberto has just mentioned in the chat – and we do actually capture all our chats and they become part of our record as well – but he feels that he might be being volunteered for something soon. And I would like to say for the formal record I suspect he is very wise in making that assumption. Oh dear, what a lot of fun we’re going to have for the next 12 months. Okay, enough frivolity from me. I told you I was going to try and be serious. It’s very difficult of course for Cheryl to be serious; she rarely is. But let’s get back to this proper planning.
What we need to do is recognize that there’s going to be clear and international big ticket items that that are going to be obvious that ICANN outreach and the At-Large community would like to be involved with; they’re the easy ones. The next layer down there will be more and more regional opportunities. To some extent many of those will be seen in the regional and national internet governance forum calendar, but we need to capture that calendar.
But they’re not going to be limited to those. There are for example, I’m aware of – and we don’t have anyone representing North America on this call do we Gisella? That just struck me as a problem.
HEIDI ULLRICH: Cheryl this is Heidi. Oh sorry Gisella.
GISELLA GRUBER: Gisella, no. Eduardo Diaz but he’s not on the call today.
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Okay. Well I’ll try and channel a North American briefly. It’s Cheryl pretending that she can possibly speak for the North American community, which of course she can’t, but I sort of remember what I’ve heard occasionally. The regional events for example in North America, there’s been a plan for a couple of years now that the North American region would like to reach out beyond just naming and numbering; still ICT related, but they would like to see outreach opportunities go into some of their larger technology shows and things. And that’s something that might resonate for example with Europe who have some probably very good opportunities for various expos and things like that that go on.
So let’s not limit our opportunities to just the usual suspects. There’s more to it than internet, the ISOC type meetings, the government type meetings and those sorts of opportunities. If you’re aware of a government activity or government sponsored activity, let me use an example from a little while back here in Australia. We had a very robust time in what’s called our e-governance program, and there was a lot of public facing interaction opportunities as the state and federal governments were gathering together, but in a public way, to discuss how they as institutions and decision and policy makers were going to better engage with community by using internet and other ICT.
So that is types of gatherings we should probably capture as well. Juan, you’re asking about could we plan multi-regional events from here – the short answer is we may not plan the events, but we can certainly plan the involvement that we and ICANN could have in the events. We are shamelessly opportunistic in this Outreach Sub-Committee. We are trying to find opportunity and insertion points for getting the ICANN, and what we are about in ICANN, message out.
And so if we can find a way to gain a seat at the table or a place in the booth, or get the information out on the USB stick or whatever it takes, then that’s what we will be doing. So what we don’t want to do is have six different approaches to the same problem, and five regions, five geographic regions all competing for the same resources. We need to work smarter not harder.
Now, to that end how are we going to do this? Do you all believe that having a, surprisingly enough, an internet based tool such as a shared calendar, and I would think not just a calendar but probably some form of list where each and every one of you can either directly feed material and opportunities into it would be a good idea. Bye Wolf, thank you for joining us.
If anyone disagrees with that speak now or forever hold their peace. If not, I’m going to ask Dev to work directly with staff because he does magic that I just don’t believe with Wiki’s and things. And just to see Dev if you can in some way represent the Technology Task Force to make sure that the selection of tool is appropriate for us sharing our opportunities please. Thank you very much. I like someone who just says “yes” when I volunteer them; that’s excellent.
Actually I think it’s a new terminology coined by our New Zealand friend Keith; he calls it being “voluntold,” not volunteered. So we might do a lot of voluntelling in this group. But Dev if you can also let us know any assistance that you need that would be good, but that’s an action item that’s going to belong to you and you’ll get back to us on the mailing list in short order if you would like any input on it.
Then we need a way to populate that, so I’m going to ask that each and every one of you are aware of the wonderful workings of the Wiki, that you have your login and capabilities of updating and editing Wiki’s. I believe we already have a mailing list; can you confirm please Silvia or Heidi?
HEIDI ULLRICH: This is Heidi. I’m quite sure that we have one. Matt, you can confirm that?
GISELLA GRUBER: Gisella confirms.
MATT ASHTIANI: Yes confirmed.
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Terrific. What we also need then is a way for other people because observers area welcome to the mailing lists, but a way for people to easily subscribe to that mailing list and their subscription to that mailing list should be upfront on our Wiki space. I’d also like to ask you do you wish to focus, between now and let’s call it June, so the other side of the Beijing meeting, only on international events; on events that we already know that ICANN is going to be involved in, or do you wish to look at regional opportunities as well as international ones, or do you just want to collect what we can and prioritize in our first meeting in January. Which way would you like to go people?
We haven’t heard from Silwia, Silwia what’s your opinion? Oh, Roberto jumped to the gun there; go ahead Roberto and then Silwia you’ve got a few minutes to think about your answer.
ROBERTO GAETANO: Well if I go back to the very beginning of ALAC, our target in the beginning was a very challenging one that we haven’t achieved yet; is to have one At-Large structure in every country as a focal point. And I think that still 10 years later, I think that this might still be a first interesting objective to reach. So first of all, we should start thinking about the countries where we don’t have any persons. As a second step I think that we need to have a sort of regional coordination because in any case the regions are one of the pillars of the ALAC.
So my personal opinion, as I also said in a comment in the chat, is that our first priority is really to focus locally. I’m a strong believer in “think globally, act locally,” and I think that we have to go down to the local communities, especially where in the regions we are not present to get new blood for ALAC. Then as a second step we can have international things and so on and so forth to bring people together. But the local work is the first priority.
I think that Wolf has made a comment that there are, for instance, national IGFs planned. I think that it would be a pity if we don’t, for instance just as an example, if we miss the opportunity to do some outreach in those local situations. Thank you.
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Thank you Roberto. And I think that directly also answers my question on do we just stay in the rarified attitude of the international ones; I think I agree wholeheartedly with you that we need to focus on the big ticket national ones as well, because it’s from those national ones as well as the others that we’d be gaining our utopia of at least one At-Large structure in each country. And Matt, what I might get you to do is, and I’d love to say I’ve looked at it recently so I’m not and I’m afraid I can’t – and it’s Cheryl for the transcript record, I apologize.
I’m not apologizing for the fact that I’m Cheryl; I’m apologizing for the fact that I didn’t say I was Cheryl earlier in my monologue. There is a map of At-Large structures and it’s probably something we should have a link to so that whenever we are in outreach mode we can very quickly know do we have nine At-Large structures in a given country – and one moment, I’m sorry for that background noise. That’s local here. That’s better now.
Or do we have an opportunity for a very first At-Large structure, so thanks for that Matt; I’m just not sure how up to date that is so we might need to have a quick look at that as well. So Roberto is certainly proposing that we look at the important things like the national IGF as well. so let’s collect those and make sure that if we can get, for example, on the planning committees that we are on the planning committees. Sylwia?
SYLWIA RUDNIK: I would like to suggest – I hear an echo. Can you hear me?
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Yes we can.
SYLWIA RUDNIK: I like what the previous speaker mentioned; that we should focus on the regional events first and then we should go and look around the country then that are ICT oriented. I don’t know all the events myself that go in the background because I don’t attend them normally, but if we just map them and try to somehow diversify and find the places where we go to, where we can visit, where we can really reach out to people. I would focus on those non-technical people because it’s my deepest concern is that they use internet and they don’t know what it is about, they don’t know we should care about it.
There’s really lots of young people that should be informed and reached out somehow. We have lots of communities in Poland that could raise their voice and be somehow supporters in that but we don’t reach out to them. So I don’t know what I can do. I would like you to at some point maybe ask how I could help in that. I would like us to have a list of specific activities that we do, what would we do – we’d print out materials, we’d make phone calls, we go and meet people – I would just like us to do that exactly so that I know what I can do at least somehow not multiply our events and activities.
And so to reach as many communities as possible. That will be from me, thank you.
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Sylwia thank you. That’s a great deal from you. And let me assure you that what you’ve done immediately in just those few words is bring up a very important task for us to get on to at the very beginning of next year. And so on our agenda for our next meeting, which is where we’re heading in a moment to do our next meeting, is the options, and I think very important discussion to have, the possibility of a how-to kit and speak of training and resources.
These are materials that we probably don’t have to create ourselves. Many of them will be in existence. The tricky part is knowing where to find them. And it would be very easy, I think, for us to bring together local need and already existing resources. So let’s make that one of our other priorities so it’s not just the getting on the organizing committees and being part of the activities themselves, making sure that we don’t just focus on the technical and that we do focus on use, but we also may need to create some resources, sorry access to some resources.
And to that end, Heidi can I ask through you, because Wolf has already left, it might be very appropriate for at our next meeting to have a representative of the ICANN Academy have a brief talk to us. Perhaps a 15 minute slot for them to present; that would be terrific.
HEIDI ULLRICH: This is Heidi, that would be good.
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Thanks very much. Silvia Vivanco I notice your hand is up and it’s very confusing when we have to Silvia’s, but I’ve promised myself that when I’m going to talk to you I’m going to say your full name.
SILVIA VIVANCO: I just wanted to suggest that it would be a good idea to establish a connection with the new team that has been formed; that outreach absolutely can (inaudible) in a Stakeholder Engagement Group to see how you can make efforts for the promotion and activities and (inaudible) that we can produce from the group, from the Global Stakeholder Engagement Group. And they (inaudible) so a phone call for outreach. So (inaudible) saying for information and promotional items, so we could invite them for the next conference call.
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Thank you Silvia. I’d like to think that working very closely with stakeholder engagement is going to be an absolute given. And in fact, we have a golden opportunity because our new program, our need, our desire to get this right and to work smarter not harder, and not duplicate but to develop is coming at a time when we have more enthusiasm, focus and talent at the helm than we’ve had certainly in my living memory, perhaps Roberto can counter me, but I think Sally and her team we’ve got the best possibility of getting quality material and activities happening and t right matching of resources and focus then possibly ever before in ICANNs history.
So I think that our utopia of that at least one ALS in every country is possibly closer to a reality than ever before. But also, we’re bringing the word of ICANN and the knowledge of ICANN and the importance of why people need to be involved in policy and not development and not just leave it to the technical bottoms; it’s very, very important. Heidi, one of the things I’d like to propose again for our, if not our next meeting the meeting after that, is a something called, I’ve used these in other activities and other organizations before, we call them a speakers bureau.
They’re a group of human resources who all have the same access to resources who have had some presentation skills, training and who are allowed to work with huge autonomy, but who are trusted agents. And I’d love to see us get to that point, so that would be absolutely perfect. Juan, it looks to me like your sounding pretty keen on having the keys as well, so I think what we’ve got now is the opportunity to have already built the agenda for our next meeting. We just need to know when we’re going to meet and how frequent we’re going to meet.
Ladies and gentlemen could I propose to you that at this point in time we plan a calendar of monthly meetings on a fixed day and on a rotational time to share the train of late nights and early mornings throughout our region. Is that something that would suit you all, or equally, something that would not suit you all equally? If I don’t see objections, that’s what I’m going to ask staff to do. Okay, Sylwia with a Y tells me that’s a good idea. Roberto, who’s suffered through more international time zones than most of us have over the years agrees, as does Dev and Juan.
That is a done deal. Victor, I’m assuming I’m going to see a green tick from you if you could put it up, so that’s going to be a given. So Gisella will do the magic that only Gisella can do. We will have a set of monthly calls on a rotational time but same day of month set up in a way that doesn’t clash with all the other commitments that she’s aware of. And we will have a small report on the action items which impinge on you, because each of us do have an action item out of today. And as soon as Dev and the staff select our sharing tools we need to populate it. But feel free to use the list with any links or information to obvious outreach opportunities that you come across when you come across them.
And if you have any access to existing resources such as I do with another speakers bureau, if you’d like to prepare a short presentation somewhere between five to ten minutes maximum for if not our next meeting the meeting after that, which will be our February meeting, we will get that worked into the agenda. Yes the DIPLO Foundation material is going to be an extremely useful one. And I would also suggest that we look closely, I might have a chat with, we might get Virginia to come and have a talk to us at well at one point because DIPLO Foundation would benefit us in two ways.
It would offer us a pre-filtered talent pool in their graduates as people who actually do outreach, as well as offer us resources and materials for up skilling and training. Ladies and gentlemen it is an interesting time of year from time management; I appreciate the fact that you’ve spent more time with us today than we had planned. I do hope you think it’s been time well-spent. What we’re going to do in the next 12 to 18 months is exciting and I’d like to think potentially groundbreaking.
I’m looking forward to working with each and every one of you and all of those who you bring to work with us as well. May I offer you the greetings of the season, my thanks to your commitment to this very important activity, and I look forward to interacting with you online between now and our January meeting. If you have not done something like fill in a Doodle poll to work out preferred times, and you’re in anyway concerned about how to do it properly, feel free to contact staff.
Heidi can I ask for you to give us finally the dates of closing of the offices before I bid you all adieu?
HEIDI ULLRICH: The dates – this is Heidi – the dates will be the 24th through the 2nd. So we’re back the 3rd.
CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Okay, so between the 24th and the 2nd we will assume that staff will not be responding in their usual instantaneous manner. And in fact, I hope they don’t need to respond to anything at all. And can I just say Heidi, can you make sure you wish what I know is a beautiful girl sitting on your lap and getting your attention all the very best for her Christmas vacation with mom and dad home in her clutches 24 by 7; that will be very exciting. I’d like to wish you all the very best of the season.
If you travel, please travel safely. And let’s look forward to a very exciting 2013 and on. Bye for now and thank you one and all.
GISELLA GRUBER: Thank you all very much; wishing you all a happy holiday.
[End of Transcript]
