NARALO Teleconference
(July 9, 2007)
Legend
O: Operator
Name: First name of member of group
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Male: Unsure of who's speaking, but know it's a male.
Female: Unsure of who's speaking, but know it's a female.
ation If we believe that all we missed was the beginning of a word because the audio cuts out, we will just put the end of the word that we can hear. If we are very sure from context what the whole word is, we'll just put the whole word, to make it easier for the reader. However, if the word could be a variety of different things, then we will show only the part of the word we could hear or thought we heard.
Bret?: …six or seven, maybe eight people on the call.
O: And excuse me – this is the operator – I do need to remind everyone that today’s call is being recorded. If anyone has any objection, you may disconnect. Thank you, you may begin.
Male: We have an American accent there and an English accent before.
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Nick?: It’s a global company, what can I tell you? pause Verizon.
O: inaudible 0:00:23 didn’t have to wait for operator 811.
Bret: There you go. Why don’t… This is Bret. Why don’t we give this maybe two or three more minutes, and then I’ll do a roll call. In the meantime, has everyone seen the agenda, which is linked from the NARALO wiki site?
Female?: inaudible
Bret: If you’re near a computer…
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Bret: …you might want to log on just so you have it front of you, and then, like I said, we’ll give it maybe two or three more minutes and we’ll do a quick roll call and get started right in.
Robert: Bret?
Bret: Yeah?
Robert: Hi, it’s Robert.
Bret: Hi, Robert.
Robert: I won’t be able to stay on too long, but I just wanted to say hello.
Female?: Robert!
Bret?: Well, hello. Happy 0:01:12 vacation.
Robert: Ah, no. It’s actually a work-related thing.
Bret: Oh, I thought it was vaca-… Anyway, we’re just sort of pausing for everyone to ring in. How long do you think you can stay on?
Robert: Probably no more than probably 20 minutes or so.
Bret: Okay. I didn’t know if you were just about to say… just about to jump off.
Robert: No, I can stay a little while.
Bret: Okay. Alright.
Nick: How’s Dublin?
Robert: Who?
Nick: How’s Dublin?
Robert: It’s quite rainy and cold.
Nick: Yeah, that’s typical. Also here, same thing.
Robert: Yeah. So Nick, are you in Geneva yet?
Nick: No, not until the end of August.
Robert: I see. So “here” meaning London, huh?
Nick: That’s true, yeah.
Bret: So Nick, you’re off Friday, is that right? Or are you off Saturday?
Nick: I leave Friday. And then I come back Tuesday.
Bret: At what time?
Nick: That’s a good question. When do I leave? I think about one o’clock, inaudible 02:24.
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Bret?: Hello.
Dharma: Hi, it’s Dharma.
Nick: Hello.
Bret?: Hi, Dharma.
Nick: Yes, it’s one o’clock.
Dharma?: It’s early.
Male: inaudible 0:02:50
Robert: Stay on the call. I’m just going to get… While we wait, I’ll…
Bret: Well, why don’t we… This is Bret. Why don’t we go ahead and get started? It’s about 12:03. I imagine the people will be joining us over the next few minutes. But let me do a quick roll call. Let’s see. This is Bret Fausett and I am the interim chair of the general assembly, which is perfect 0:03:22 for the call today, and also a member of Web405, an accredited ALS.
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Bret: Perhaps… Let’s see. We can go… I don’t know how to “go around” laughter but why don’t… why don’t we…
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Bret: …have people identify themselves if they’re on the on the call and I’ll keep a record of who’s on.
Robert: This is… I’m Robert Guerra. I’m with Privaterra, that’s based in Toronto but currently until next week I’m in Dublin, and I’m also the At-Large Committee representative for the North American RALO.
Bret: Who’s next?
Gareth: I’ll take it. Gareth Shearman, Telecommunities Canada. I’m in Victoria.
Seth: Seth Reiss, Honolulu.
Michael: Michael Maranda, Chicago.
Dharma: Dharma Dailey, the Catskills 0:04:34.
Nick: laughter
Bret: I’m sorry, who was that?
Dharma: Dharma.
Bret: Oh, Dhar-… Okay, thanks.
Darlene: Darlene Thompson, Nunavut, Canada.
Garth: Garth Graham, Telecommunities Canada, Victoria.
Bret: Anyone else?
Wendy: Wendy Seltzer, New York at the moment.
Sylvia: Sylvia Cara, People Who, California.
Danny: Danny Younger on the call.
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Robert?: Where Da-… Danny, where are you?
Danny: New York City.
Robert?: Cool, thanks.
Bret: Who is the person before Danny who said she was in California? I missed that.
Sylvia: Sylvia. Sylvia Caras…
Nick: Sylvia Caras.
Bret: Okay, alright.
Sylvia: People Who.
Bret: Alright.
Nick: Nick Ashton-Hart, ICANN staff, London.
Susie: Susie Sandford-Smith, ICANN staff, London.
Bret: Alright, anyone else on the call who has not identified themselves who would like to? pause Well, alright. Let’s… If you look down the agenda, the first item is adoption of the agenda. laughter Unless anyone has an objection, I would like to suggest the agenda that is appearing on the wiki will be adopted by acclamation. Any objections to that 0:06:13? pause Hearing none, it is adopted.
We were going to talk briefly as the second item on the agenda, the San Juan meeting recap. What I’d like to do is, since I wasn’t there, ask people who were – and this also will actually I think blend into our third agenda item, which is priorities for July and August – hear a little bit about from… especially from people who were there or people who may have participated by remote connection, sort of what you saw coming out of the San Juan meeting and how that might feed into things that we’ve decided to do for the next sort of window of time here, July and August. And I’ll just turn it open to whoever would like to report or speak.
Robert: This is Robert. I can start and maybe people can fill in. I’ll… What I’ll try to do is I’ll just go over some very high-level details, and since I’m going to leave early, I’ll ask others maybe to fill in.
So the San Juan meeting… Actually before the San Juan meeting on the 20 … – most people arrived on the 24th, the Saturday – there was an informal get together on the 25th. There was a meeting of At-Large representatives, At-Large Structures from North America that got together to both finalize and adopt documents related to the North American RALO.
I don’t have the… I’m not with a computer right now, but it was a one-day session that went over both the documents and amendments and comments that had been expressed by those present and those not in regards to go forward. By the end of the day, the documents had changed a little bit but were adopted I think mostly unanimously. There was one section that has one objection, and by the end of the day, the organizations had concluded the documents for the North American RALO.
At the same time and afterwards on Monday, it gave the opportunity for the North American At-Large Structure individuals who were present to both meet other At-Large Structures that were there but also to meet staff and also participate quite actively in some of the discussions that were taking place. Several of the At-Large Structures also participated in most if not all of the At-Large Committee meetings that were scheduled during the week.
Beau and myself were… had put in candidate statements to be representatives on the At-Large committee. I was given a two-year term and Beau was given a one-year term, and we participated in the ALAC discussions that… or the At-Large Committee meetings that took place during the week.
What else? The At-Large Committee, I can go into more detail later, but had very detailed and prolonged discussions about procedure, about documents that they had had pending for a while. They adopted… I guess it’s 0:10:01 procedures regarding to accreditation of At-Large Structures but still had some other documents open.
From my perspective, it was a very energetic crowd, one that because of the meetings really got a sense of not only the ICANN discussions but also some of the areas of concern. To those who could make it, there was a better understanding of the complexities of the issues and the group seems to be very interested and very committed to plan ahead, to outreach in the North American region, to bring really a perspective of the North American user to some of the ICANN discussions as a whole, and also to… also work with some of the other At-Large Structures in another part 0:11:00 of the world.
That’s kind of a very quick statement. There’s probably more to it. I’ll leave that to my other colleagues who were there as well.
Bret: Okay. Thanks, Robert. Anyone else like to address San Juan and what you see as sort of the bigger issues coming out of the San Juan meeting that we can work on over the next couple of months? pause
Dharma: This is Dharma. I just want to say that for me, the thing coming out of that meeting is really that the North American RALO has some very good people involved in it that are representative geographically and representative in a number of different types of constituencies, and there also have varied sense of balance 0:11:52 about ICANN and other internet governance issues. And what I think would be the most helpful for us is to try to identify, map out the relationship between what the internet users care about and how that relates to internet governance – you know, kind of our own framework – which is what… one of the things that I was suggesting that we try to do at LA when we get together, because I think that will really help our work move forward.
Bret: Okay. Are you… I think this is a good idea. Are you talking about perhaps a scoping document where we can say, “Here are the things that people really care about” – either North America or general At-Large users – “and here are the things that we can do within ICANN to help”?… overtalking 0:12:53
Dharma: Yes, that would be the outcome of it.
Bret: Yeah.
Dharma: But a number of us have gotten involved with the NA RALO recently, hence appropriate technology, you know, community informatics, that kind of thing. So it’s also some specific processes about how we get to that document, which includes… you know, which would be each of us surveying the people that we, you know, are supposedly representing to find out, you know, what their concerns are about internet usage, communicate usage, and then convening at what I think would be… The process that I think works well for this type of… to have this kind of outcome is a facilitated workshop led by people who know how to do that kind of mapping, which… I’ve been through that process a couple of times when different constituencies have been engaged around a particular issue and I thought it was really effective.
And I talked to Robert and some other people in the RALO about it and they thought that it would also be a good use of our time to do something like that. And I posted it, and Veronica – who’s from the European RALO, right? – mentioned that Diplo 0:14:24 Foundation does this kind of stuff. So, you know, potentially we would have some partners to try to do that, to try to do something like that.
Bret: Okay. I think it’s a great suggestion. Anybody else?
Robert?: Michael, any comments?
Michael: Well, in terms of immediate things…
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Michael: …that came out of it, some of us have got engaged in trying to get our constituencies up to date on IPV6 questions. So that points us to 0:15:00 following what’s happening in the ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers. So we’re stepping things up in that direction right now.
Bret: That would be a ve-… We’ve got very little… This is Bret again. We’ve got very little insight from the ALAC into what’s going on in the addressing community, and I wonder how we can – and Michael maybe is the person to do it – how we can better get information about what’s going on in the regional internet registries and especially within ARIN. That would be a great thing to be able to add to the NA RALO.
Robert: This is Robert. Let me just say that we – both Michael and Dharma, and myself – we had I think some very productive meetings with the CO of ARIN, Ray, first name starts with “P.” They are… They kind of saw… They were delighted to meet us but also are really keen to collaborate with us because they have the issue that they want to alert users and others about the upcoming shortage… well, exhaustion of IPV4. And so they’re really keen to collaborate and maybe to have some NA RALO people participate at ARIN events, and if we organize anything ARIN would seem to be quite open to participate in events that the NA RALO may be doing as well. So it was very productive and I think some good things could result even between now and LA.
Bret?: Yeah, and…
Gareth: This is Gareth… coughs This is Gareth Shearman. I… Post-San Juan, I also contacted Ray Plzak, and I concur that he’s very interested in reaching out to us and our organizations and using inaudible 0:16:59 ability of outreach with their concerns about the transition.
Bret: You know, that would be grea-… I wonder… We ought to perhaps focus on that as a meeting that we can have in Los Angeles, to have representatives from ARIN – and maybe all of the RIRs if they’re interested or available, but particularly ARIN – to speak with us in Los Angeles.
Robert: Oh. One item that I forget as well, I’ve also been appointed the At-Large Committee liaison to the Security and Stability Advisory Committee, of which Ray Plzak is the vice chair. So we have basically a North American representative of the ALAC on SSAC, and it’s the first time there’s an At-Large representative as a liaison to the Security Advisory Committee.
Bret?: Well, that’s very nice thing 0:17:58.
Nick: On that topic, may I just remind everyone, and you’re all going to get sick of this, but there is actually a global At-Large working group on the IPV4 to V6 migration, and needless to say the… you know, everyone’s welcome to it, but at least one person from each region could participate in it, that would be very helpful.
Michael?: Izumi is heading that – am I correct? – from ALAC.
Robert?: There is a two 0:18:32… I’m on… I’ve got drafted on it, and I believe there’s someone else from the ALAC as well.
Nick: Yeah, it is Izumi. Also, Jacqueline is there and inaudible Izumi and you.
Bret: Nick, is that an open list or is that by 0:18:49…?
Nick: Yeah.
Bret: Yes.
Female: overtalking
Nick: All the working groups, all the At-Large working groups are open lists. And, you know, we could have any number of people from North America, for example, join it, but if at least one from each region does, then they can help bring their regional view into the…
Wendy?: I subscribe to every one of those lists and not one of them has had any traffic yet because it’s much easier to hold conversations on the main ALAC list.
Bret: Yeah, which is no-… laughter which is not without its separate set of problems. You know, Nick, could you send the URL for the subscription to the list the way you sent the GNSO liaison thing. I just subscribed to that this morning, by the way. If you…
Nick: Yes, I saw.
Bret: Yeah. If you didn’t see it on the list everyone, there’s a list for GNSO issues and you can subscribe to that, and Nick forwarded it to the list this morning.
Wendy: If you chop a few parameters off the URL that’s at the bottom of every NA-Discuss message, you’ll see the list of all lists.
Bret: Oh, okay.
Wendy: …and can go in and subscribe to any or all of them.
Bret: Yeah. And, and probably not…
Wendy: overtalking 0:19:58 …I continue to think that subject headers are a much better way to filter traffic. Then you can actually go back and find things in inaudible.
Bret: Yeah, I… I agree with Wendy, that the fragmenting of discussions is… has its downside. But we… And, you know, I think that’s probab-…
Wendy: We’re off agenda, and I apologize.
Bret: Pardon me?
Wendy: I said that’s off-agenda, I apologize.
Bret: Yeah, and it’s probably an issue for the main ALAC to figure out, how that we can best improve our communications, and maybe Robert that’s something you can pass up to them at some point.
Robert: Yeah. The only… I mean, the one thing that I’ll say in that regard is it was very helpful for me to have a lot of the people that were in on this call who were in San Juan to participate in the ALAC meetings. They were very constructive, and they… we basically played like a team and reinforced a lot of the views. And I think also we’re seeing how quickly the groups seemed to have kind of gelled and worked together and was constructive. It’s really caused some of the other ALSes from other regions to see that they… you know, that there’s a group now that’s active and are encouraging… you know, they’re now encouraged to play a role because otherwise they see that, you know, the North American view might predominate. Not necessarily a bad thing, but they see that the group is very engaged.
Nick: inaudible 0:21:35 great.
Bret: Anything else from San Juan, folks? And then I’ll move onto the issue of sort of policy priorities for the next two months.
Evan: I’ll just take the opportunity. I joined sometime during the discussion. It’s Evan.
Bret: Oh, Evan. Thank you for identifying yourself. Anyone else who was a late joiner who did not identify when we were going through the roll call? pause
Alright. Well, let’s then move on to the next formal subject on agenda, which was priorities for July and August. I know that we’ve just hit a couple of issues in our conversation about things that were coming out of San Juan, particularly Michael raised the issue of focussing on address issues and completion of IPV4 space and the migration to IPV6. I know that there’s been a lot of traffic on the list about domain name tasting, which I think probably deserves some of our attention. Are there any other issues that people have identified or want to expand on?
Robert: This is Robert. There’s one issue that I would say that the ALAC as a whole and the North American group probably heard about but haven’t been engaged, that for me going into the meeting in Los Angeles would be very useful to get some comments but also to get the group more up to speed and maybe just ask them a particular thing 0:23:17, is the… Two things. One, the transparency and openness review or… they can probably correct this, but that’s going on as well. It was a good part of the meeting in San Juan, and given that particularly CIRA, who’s the “.ca” people in Canada, are really keenly involved, I would be really keen to, you know, people like Danny and others but also some of the newcomers, you know, the values that they have in terms of going forward, to look at what’s being put out, and for us to be able to maybe be more involved in that. And probably later in this year, it’s probably too early right now, but something that’s definitely starting is a call for proposals for the At-Large review as a whole has also been issued about three weeks ago by ICANN. They’re looking for that contract to be I think awarded by later in the summer, early fall, and so the whole At-Large review will be taking place. So if the people who went and also people who’ve been participating in North America have ideas on how At-Large in generally has done its thing and ideas to go forward, that would be another space that, you know, one should not forget about and try to develop, you know, specific proposals for.
Bret: So Robert’s brought up transparency and also the At-Large…
Robert: It’s the openness in transparency and the At-Large review, that the external reviewer date 0:24:53 is just out, so if anyone knows anyone, but also, you know, that’s going to be taking place, so people should start to become familiar with it.
Dharma?: Can I make a request that especially that can be put onto the NARALO calendar? Like whatever the dates are, when things need to happen, and even if you have, you know, and estimation of like when, you know, we would have to do work on it by to actually have something to say. You know, those kind of things.
Bret: Yeah, that’s a good idea. I think… And it’s probably not just a list of the deadlines but more of a… I don’t know, project management sort of solution that would talk about, you know, what we need to do, all the interim steps we need to be able to be in a position to make a comment by the comment date.
Dharma?: Yeah. Well, just in general, if all of us are joining other committees and so forth, you know, I’m not interested in knowing every detail of every committee, but if we had one common calendar where we could see that something was being decided in three weeks, you know, that we glanced at every once in a while, that would probably be really helpful for our own organizing.
Nick: Just so everybody knows, the global At-Large calendar on Google Calendars, which is on the front page of every regional website and the ALAC website at alac.icann.org amongst other places, all the regional secretariats and offices except for the North American ones – just because I haven’t added you yet, that’s all – have the ability to add items to that calendar. Now also…
Male: And that’s set up on Google Calendar? Wonderful.
Nick: Yeah. Yeah. You’ll find it on the front page. If you just go to the www.naralo.org, you’ll see a link to an XML, an HTML, and an iCal version of that calendar. So that can certainly be updated by more than just me. I’m happy to add updates, of course, and if somebody should be added to that, just tell me to add them as a calendar editor, really.
And the other thing I would say on deadlines is the… Vittorio got the ALAC added to the list of communities that is meant to be responding the big IDN process, that implementation testing process that’s going on. And the deadline for final comments is the LA meeting. So those who are interested in IDNs, I would suggest you join the IDN working group because Hong, the liaison, has already put out a schedule for responding to the various questions that are part of that consultation and she’ll be wanting obviously input from North America on it.
Bret?: overtalking 0:28:04
Nick: By the same token… By the same token, on the GNSO side, there is the GNSO, you know, review itself and the response to that for which documents are just being posted. But the GNSO is obviously also in the throes of trying to finish the new gTLD process which is probably, arguably more interesting to North Americans than it is to others because in many other parts of the world they use country code TLDs far more than generic TLDs. And there has not been a formal ALAC response in relation to generic TLDs, so Alan has been following it just I’m sure as you did, Bret, when you were liaison because it’s been going on for quite some time. But it’s getting to the point where if At-Large wishes to have a response, it would need to go in.
Bret: Is Alan on the call?
Danny?: Bret, can I get in the queue please?
Bret: Sure. So, l-… So Nick, again, I think one of the action items I guess we need to think about, and I think it’s probably an issue for you and I and the secretariat, is to look at preparing a list of these… the items that we’re talking about now with our deadlines and our, you know, critical paths and all that stuff sometime over the next couple weeks.
Nick: Sure.
Robert: This is Robert. I have to go, so I just… My battery’s about to die.
Bret?: Well, th-…
Robert: I look forward to hearing how the meeting went and I will be checking my e-mail probably in about four hours, so I look forward to… hoping this is a productive call and catching up with the review 0:30:06 in the coming days.
Bret: Thanks for calling in out of country, Robert. I appreciate it.
Robert: Good night, inaudible.
Female: Bye Robert.
Bret: Okay. Danny, you’re next.
Danny: Thank you, Bret. I have a priority for the month of July, specifically concerning the American region. On the 3rd of July, the US government posted a request for quotations pertaining to the management of the .us TLD. The RFQ, which is rather long, contains rather onerous sections, one of which specifically states, “A contractor shall implement a process for accrediting registrars to register names. Such a process shall include a contract with each registration prohibiting proxy and anonymous registration services.” I have got a number of issues with the arrogance of the US government in thinking that it, as opposed to the sponsoring organization, is in charge of this ccTLD, and I’m particularly troubled by their attitude towards the anonymous registration and proxy services. I think this area 0:31:20 in particular deserves a response from the North American community.
Nick: May I just follow up and say that these issues that are faced by the US registry, the US is not alone.
Bret?: I’m sorry, can you expand on that a little bit?
Wendy?: overtalking 0:31:38 …targeted with a First Amendment-based lawsuit.
Nick: I would just say that, you know, most countries feel a proprietary right over their country code TLDs, and a number of them impose by fiat whatever they want. And so I suspect, you know, if inquiries were made with other regions, you would find a chorus of people saying, you know, “We have this problem here,” “We have a problem like that there”… overtalking 0:32:14
Danny: Well, rightfully…. probably should be addressed and rightfully you shouldn’t have a ccTLD with only a single stakeholder.
Bret: Yeah. I mean, I think the… As far as… I think Danny makes a good point, that if you’re going to change .us, it’s going to come from a public comment process with the United States, it’s not going to come from another place. Whether those comments are going to be successful or not, you know, I’m skeptical, but it’s still good for the United States to hear it. My understanding is that the status quo is that you can’t have proxies in .us and that’s a battle that NeuStar and Go Daddy and others have already fought and lost. And that…
Wendy?: But they lost it on standing grounds which wouldn’t prevent another challenge from being raised… overtalking 0:33:04
Danny?: Correct, that was the Peterson case.
Wendy?: …raised more successfully.
Bret: So perhaps, you know, maybe there’s another case, but certainly one way in is to deliver a comment.
Danny: Well, as the RFQ has an expiry date of July 30, it would probably behoove the community to send in a comment before the contractor is forced to… only 0:33:24 look at the contractor submission.
Bret: Danny, could you write up a paragraph to send to the NA discuss list explaining the issue and giving us the proper e-mail address or place to…
Danny: I’d be happy to, Bret.
Bret: That would be great. Let’s see. Anyone else have an issue for the immediate, near term here?
Evan: Bret, this is Evan. Sorry if I may have missed something at the very beginning of the conversation. Amongst the things that came up at San Juan were, you know, two specific projects, both of which prob… require 0:34:02- reasonably immediate action at least in the collection of some people to start the ball rolling on them, being an ALS recruitment and orientation session in LA and the concept of an At-Large summit to be planned for June.
In both of these cases, there need to be things done I’d say reasonably quickly to at least get things off the ground. The summit is something particularly of interest to me, and during the discussions we had in San Juan, there was budgetary issues because of the significant amounts of money that this is going to take, but also a priming issue just to find who involved in the other RALOs are interested in helping make this happen. We especially need to get the cooperation of the European RALO considering that we’re intending to have this summit on their turf. So there’s certain parts of this that need to get at least launched sooner rather than later.
Bret: I think the idea of a global summit is a… just speaking personally, is a fantastic one. And with the idea, Evan, that we would do it around a… at or around an ICANN meeting?
Evan: Well, I’ll give my own impressions that came out of the many discussions that we had on this. Many of the people in on this call were in on at least most of these discussions. The intention is that it would be a parallel conference that might start the days before the June ICANN conference in Europe. The intention is that At-Large or at least, you know, a conference committee of At-Large would put together a series of conference sessions to which all ALSes in the world would be invited to come and attend. It would be a separate conference that would have separate tracks. Obviously it would be our intention not to get in the way of the main ICANN sessions, but to provide At-Large a forum at which it would basically determine who it wants to talk to, who it wants to hear from, and to have a sort of parallel track if you would at the June ICANN meeting.
The timing is intended to basically make sure that, you know, everything gets done. Because of the size and scope of this thing, it’s not something that could be pulled off in a few months. The intention was, you know, to get ICANN buy-off in LA, to get the conference session nailed down in time for the February meeting in Asia, and to actually have the whole thing going itself at the June meeting.
Bret: What reception did you get from the other At-Large Structures… I mean, not At-Large Structures, but RALOs, about the utility of this?
Michael: Could I pipe in on this? This is Michael.
Bret: Yeah, go ahead.
Michael: So we had a really, an informal meeting with as many At-Large people as we could gather around, and we had people from all the regions except Africa and pretty much everyone was in favour, and we went through an extended discussion saying… to come to the point that June is far enough off that it seemed that it could be doable. Cheryl… Was it Langdon-Orr? Is that her last name?
Nick: Yeah.
Michael: …from the Asian-Pacific region made recommendation that… sorry, to initiate this, that let’s say the North American RALO secretariat does a formal notification to the other secretariats to say, “Hey, this is what we’re interested in. Let’s get all the RALOs involved and then see what goes from there,” as that being like probably the best next step for like a formal inter-RALO collaboration.
Nick?: So, so…
Darlene: And just add to that – this is Darlene here – I have been added to the secretariat list, so I now can do outreach to them. That happened late last week and as soon as I get back into work this week, I will be doing that outreach. So far there has been absolutely no action on that list whatsoever to report on, so I think it’s going to take a lot of push from probably North America to get this happening. But there’s a lot of interested people out there too, so I think this is definitely doable.
Bret: Nick, I… Nick, this is Bret. If we have… Say this is something we really want to do. I know that the budget for upcoming year has already been approved. If we wanted to get say At-Large – you know, I’m pulling a number out of a hat here – $250,000 for a summit in Paris or Uzbekistan or wherever it’s going to be next year in June, do we still… do we have time to do that, and if we do, when does that request need to be formally made to ICANN?
Nick: Well, you know, the sooner the better. I mean, a request came in using the form already. I’ve already had some conversations with Doug Brent and with Denise about it.
Bret: Oh, so you have received a budget request for this?
Nick: Yeah.
Bret: Okay.
Evan: What happened 0:39:10-… -overtalking
Nick: Yeah, it went out on the list actually, I think.
Evan: Yeah. What happened actually, Bret, on the second-last day of the San Juan meeting, we had a very intense barnstorming session. Darlene pulled out a spreadsheet and we basically came up with some very, very rough numbers…
Bret?: Oh, that’s right.
Evan: …with the intention of putting it in people’s hands before we left San Juan.
Bret: Brilliant. Thank you.
Darlene: And Nick, do you have that spreadsheet of mine, because nobody else has suggested any changes to it, so it’s in as final a form as it’s going to be.
Nick: Which one? “ICANN next step”?
Darlene: Yes, that’s it.
Nick: The one on the…
Darlene: And the travel amounts were left blank so that you could put them in because you know that stuff.
Nick: Yeah, it’s… it’s… To get an actual final number, we need an actual city where it’s going to be located in. And the city for Europe hasn’t been set yet, though there are only… I think there are three candidates. So I’m n-… Now that Denise is now back off of her holiday and Doug is back I think this week, so I’m sure I’ll start talking about it more with them to get a final number.
Darlene: And Nick, actually that “ICANN next step” one wasn’t dealing with the summit, it was dealing with the LA meeting, sort of to get people so that we could do recruitment for more ALSes at the LA meeting and for orientation activities there and various things. And part of that also was to organize, you know, a working group to relay to 0:40:39 unaffiliated individuals’ participation. So that was for the LA meetings and then also for doing other recruitment as well. The summit was left out of that because we went sure if it fit into this year or next fiscal.
Nick: Yeah, I don’t have any other spreadsheets from you on that one, I’m afraid.
Darlene: Okay. So yeah, we didn’t… we haven’t really, you know, identified the amount that we would need for the summit yet, so this is the first time I’ve heard numbers being thrown around at all, so it will be kind of like the two different things, the one spreadsheet that I’ve got there for the LA stuff and then the other Evan 0:41:13 for the summit.
Bret: Okay, so – this is Bret – we’ve got Darlene and Evan working on this. Is anyone else working on this? Michael?
Michael: Sure.
Bret: Who else was, is involved in the summit planning?
Evan: Well, there’s two specific projects that have been mentioned, and they’re somewhat discrete. And one of them is an ALS recruitment and orientation meeting planned for LA, and the other one is the summit. So there were two explicit projects.
Bret: Oh yeah. I think those are very separate. I think we probably all as North Americans want to be involved in the outreach in Los Angeles, but I wonder whether we can delegate to a subgroup the responsibility for seeing if they can move forward the summit idea.
Darlene: Yeah, actually, and I put out a call for, you know, interested parties and I have got a pile of names back, and I just haven’t organized this properly because I wasn’t in the office last week. So I will be working on this in the following week and I’ve got a bunch of names I can’t tell you right off the top of my head because they are all squirreled away in the proper filing place in my Outlook box. But yeah, we do have a little group coming together here.
Bret: Terrific. Well, look 0:42:18, this is probably, unless someone else has a priority for the next two months, a perfect opportunity to segue into agenda item number four, which is our outreach efforts for more North American ALSes, which we were just talking about. I know we want to do something in Los Angeles. I think we probably want to move that forward in this next couple of months’ period by doing perhaps person-to-person and group-to-group outreach, and also looking at e-mail and electronic methods of outreach.
Dharma: This is Dharma. There’s so many of us and there’s so many different types of people that we are connected with that it seems like, you know, there’s an opportunity for us to do different types of things. So I think we should have a separate conversation that’s just about the different ideas, because right now there’s something like seven different things that people have talked about doing for LA 0:43:16. So, it would… And at this point, I think every one of them is doable if we… you know, if people find their name on the line and two or three people squirrel off and do it. But, you know, that’s something that probably deserves another call, unfortunately, or something else just to get that going.
Nick: Never a problem to arrange calls, by the way.
Bret: laughter Good to know. I’m afraid to know that, actually. The… I think also, you know, there’s a… I think we want to… Well, let me back up. For Los Angeles, I know we want to have an in-person event, where we invite people into an orientation session where we’ve tried to recruit people to come to the meeting and maybe advocated that they get some sponsored travel perhaps to go to the meeting and join up and participate. I think also in the interim, perhaps we can work on a explanation page of “What is ICANN?” “What does it mean to North America?” FAQ, something that can explain what it is we do and how organizations can join, and my guess is – and Nick, you’re probably the best person to tell me that I’m right – is that all this already exists, that maybe we need to do a better job of pulling it together and figuring out how to disseminate it.
Nick: Well, I think some exists. I mean, I cobbled together some stuff last year even for the IGF. So, I mean, there are some, some things. There’s going to be a lot more in the next sort of 30 days, once the writing is done on all the issues and the rest of it, but there is some now.
I mean, one thing I should say here, and I really hate to do it 0:45:24… almost hate to say it, but it’s really unusual to have two meetings in the same region back to back like this, and you wouldn’t… I mean, if you all have an outreach, you know, if you ask for funding for an outreach event in LA, that’s one thing, but the whole region will not get travel support to go to a second meeting in a row. There’s just no way we can do it.
Darlene?: And Nick, I thought that this was discussed in San Juan and we were told that there was going to be two this year because we wouldn’t be having any North American meeting the following year, so we were kind of gaining one, an extra one this year but not the next year.
Nick: What would happen is, you know, we would do something for the region later, but not back to back. It’s impossible. I already have the Europeans wanting to have a regional GA in October even though they had a meeting in Lisbon in March and are going to have another meeting in Europe next June. The money doesn’t exist to do that, especially not…
Female: No, ICANN… overtalking 0:46:37
Nick: …especially not and do an At-Large summit. I mean, it’s just… there’s just no way.
Bret: Well, what about the idea of giving us… I don’t know.
Nick: We can look for money from other places too. I mean, you know, there are grants and things like that, you know, could do 0:46:56 that.
Bret: Yeah, we get a block of money and we allocate it in a way that, you know, makes sense to us so that, you know… I absolutely don’t need any travel, I live here. laughter So, you know, rather than getting hotel rooms, we can have people move… you know, stay together and, you know, we can…
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Bret: And perhaps rather than giving people 100% funding, we could give people 25, 50% funding.
Evan?: So how many sleeping bags does office fit, Bret?
Bret: Well, my o-… You know, my office fits, you know, hundreds literally. My house would be a different matter. But I am rather far from Marina del Ray. But, you know, if you don’t mind driving, I got the space for you.
Gareth: Now back to the question At-Large outreach just in general, if I may – this is Gareth – somewhere during the conference at San Juan, Nick, I picked up a fairly nice brochure, “ICANN At-Large,” and is the text for that available online? It would be interesting information to use for talking to potential ALS candidates about what this is all about.
Nick: We can certainly get digital copies of it. It’s actually been translated into I think six languages. It’s been around for a while, long before I was here.
Gareth?: It was… The one I’ve got is dated 2006.
Evan?: Yeah, we’ve given out… there was the… You know, ICANN had its own booth over on the floor together with the other exhibitors and I think that that was one of the things that they were giving out there. I think one of the issues that was raised was… You know, I attended and Darlene attended the meeting in Toronto where the ALS recruitment was done. I think it’s just a matter of recognizing that Jacob did a fantastic job in putting things together, but there’s some other things coming from the ALSes’ point of view that we decided 0:49:05 would be more of interest to new ALSes or maybe gaps in the information that we might think of presenting that might not otherwise have been considered.
Bret?: Yeah.
Michael: I’ve got a question for Nick. In terms of the two meetings in a row question and there not being money, who actually makes that budgetary decision and who would we have to make a case to if we thought we had a compelling case?
Nick: Well, in the first instance, me, but I would have to sell it upstairs. There’s… I just can’t imagine that it would happen, guys, to be honest with you, because then five other regions would want to do it. Especially not until 0:50:00 At-Large summit. I just can’t see it happening. I mean, we can try. I’m not saying don’t try, I’m just saying don’t expect that it will work.
Evan?: Understood.
Nick: I mean, At-Large gets, you know, quite a lot of funding. No other constituency gets anything like this.
Evan?: I think the main thing is that we’re going to have certain presenters down there for the ALS recruitment. We don’t necessarily need to bring every ALS down there in order to attract new ALSes.
Nick: Well, and we can certainly arrange telephonic participation as we do for people who are not there, so there can be meetings held even if everyone is not physically present. But yes, I mean, to say we want to do an outreach event, that’s a saleable thing, and of course that would involve some people from the community being at the outreach event. I’m just saying that a general, all North America meeting, I don’t think that can be sold.
Dharma?: Well, what constitutes an outreach meeting? I mean, is there specific steps 0:51:16 or specific things that are…
Nick: No. Nothing mentioned.
Dharma?: …considered to be “outreach,” or how does that… what are the parameters of that?
Nick: You know, it’s very open because each region is different. So, you know, if you felt that you had… You would know best what would work in North America. inaudible 0:51:41 doesn’t have any magic…
Evan?: Let me ask you, Nick. What have other RALOs done in terms of their own recruitment efforts?
Nick: Because there wasn’t any RALOs until last December, the efforts before that were a couple people going to the ICANN Studienkreis in Eastern Europe – that’s how Veronica got involved, actually, from participating in that meeting last October. And what was the other one? There was an outreach meeting held at the Athens IGF last… When was that? Last…
Sylvia: November, which is how I got involved. This is Sylvia.
Nick: Yeah. Yeah, of course, Sylvia. That’s how you got involved. But those are the two that I can think of. I know that there had been others before my time, but those are the ones I know of.
Bret: Well, and I think we can also just do good old word-of-mouth outreach. I think we’ve got like 15 North American At-Large structures. If we try to contact like two organizations, you know, we could triple our numbers in a very short amount of time.
Nick: Well, and just don’t forget that soon there will be a full-time member of staff whose whole job it is, is to deal with the regions and to help the regions. And, you know, you can… they’ll be able to do lots of leg work for you if you want.
Bret: Look, I promised… I think we can finish up the outreach stuff on the list. I promised that I would reach a hard stop at one o’clock and I want to stay on that. We’ve got two more quick items to talk about. Nick, you just mentioned that we’re going to get an additional staff person. What will that… This is actually number five with staffing. What will that person’s title be and how will that person interrelate with you and Susie?
Nick: “Secretary for the Regions At-Large” is the title.
Bret: Okay. And what’s the line of reporting there?
Nick: To me.
Bret: Okay.
Nick: And that person and I are both supported by an administrative person. Susie will not be with us for that much longer. We’re currently recruiting a full-time person, whereas Susie’s been part-time all this time, even though she doesn’t seem like it.
Bret: Is that going to be posted so that we can forward it to people who we think might be interested?
Nick: The administration job is already posted on the ICANN job section.
Bret: Terrific.
Nick: The Secretary for the Regions should be posted within the next couple of days, and it will then get sent out to you.
Bret: Will that be based in Geneva or Los Angeles?
Nick: It will be based within two time zones of me, either way.
Bret: laughter Alright, okay.
Nick: So it could be anywhere from Iceland to Cape Town.
Bret: Very good, alright. laughter Okay. Well, look, also on this, we need to elect a permanent chair of the general assembly. What I would like to do as the interim chair is send a note to the list later today after the phone call asking for statements of interest, hold that open for let’s say about – what’s today’s date? – say we hold that open until August 1st, that would give us one, two, three… that gives us three and a half weeks to hold that open, and then see if we can reach consensus around a new chair for our next meeting. Any thoughts on whether that’s… Any objections to that proposal?
Wendy?: Bret, would you be willing to put into your description also what the responsibilities of the chair are?
Bret: I will do that. That’s a good idea.
Gareth?: What is the term of the position?
Bret: I would think that this… I’ll need to look back at the rules, but I believe that we agreed initially that the general assembly would not be in… The main role of the general assembly chair is to make sure that we have regular…
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Bret: …for the ALAC positions from North America, and so as long as the person’s in office for next summer’s election, I think it would be… pause I’m th-… I’m… You know, as I… I think it… What would be the term? I think we could it from say August until the close of the ICANN meeting at the end of 2008. I don’t see any reason to elect someone for three months, but…
Evan?: I’d have to go back to the rules. I don’t recall there being a fixed term.
Bret: I don’t recall… overtalking 0:57:22
Darlene: I don’t think there are either.
Bret: I don’t think there’s… I’m just thinking of sort of what’s practical. But let me think on that. That’s a good question.
Gareth?: Why don’t you propose that together with the call for statements of interest so we will know what we’re voting on.
Bret: I will do that. I will do that… overtalking 0:57:39
Darlene?: Also, will you be doing the same for the secretariat?
Bret: I thought we approved the secretariat in San Juan. Am I mistaken?
Darlene?: Oh, no. No, no, we got an interim pair of us going here, but we’re still interim and that’s it.
Michael?: Didn’t you read the fine print?
Bret: Okay. Alright. Well then, then if it’s interim, then why don’t we put out a document that calls for statements of interest for permanent secretariat at the same time we do for permanent chair?
Michael?: Sounds good.
Bret: Alright. Let’s see. Did everyone look at… And since we’re doing both, I probably won’t get that out today but I will get it out by the end of the day tomorrow. Let’s see. Darlene, can I talk to you about the secretariat maybe by e-mail?
Darlene: Yeah, no problem.
Bret: Okay. Let’s see. The last item is here is that I had proposed a tentative list of meetings through the end of the year. I don’t know if anyone has taken a look at that yet. Actually, I do know that people have taken a look at that yet because I have a report of the fact that it’s been viewed 25 times. But the proposal is August 6th at this time, September 10th at this time, October 8th at this time, and December 3rd at this time. Any objections either to this particular time of day or those dates?
Evan: Bret, my only suggestion is perhaps just to keep it consistent with something like the second Monday of the month or the blah Monday of the month, whereas in some cases it’s the first and in some cases it’s the second.
Bret: Yeah. Okay.
Evan: That was my only suggestion, is that if you’re looking for a regular pattern, saying the second Monday of the month, that’s something that can be reasonably easily engraved in the brain.
Nick?: overtalking 0:59:44
Darlene: Evan, you’ve got inaudible except for that September one, I don’t think we’ll have it… they only have it on the first Monday of the month because it will run into the Labour Day long weekend, won’t it?
Evan: No, I was suggesting second Monday.
Darlene: Oh, okay.
Bret: laughter Very good. Okay.
Male: What happened to the one in November?
Bret: We have an ICANN meeting that starts right around Halloween and goes through the first few days of November, so I didn’t think we would need one.
Male: Okay.
Bret: But, well, how about the second Monday of every month? Does that work for people? Can you calendar an hour at this time the second Monday of every month?
Danny?: Yeah.
Female: Yeah. 1:00:28
Bret: Alright. Well, let’s do that. I will update the calendar and forward the information to Nick so he can put it on the ICANN calendar, and let’s put that in. Again, we’ll try not to make decisions on our calls, so if you can’t make it, you can pick up in the discussion on the list.
Well, is there any other business before we close?
Susie: It’s Susie here. I just want to check, I don’t think I’ve got everybody down. If I say who I’ve got, I’ve got Sylvia, Danny, Robert, Dharma, Michael, Bret, Gareth, Wendy, Evan, Darlene, Nick obviously.
Male: inaudible 1:01:11, I just got in late.
Seth: You missed me. Seth Reiss from Honolulu.
Susie: Sorry.
Garth: And you missed me, Garth Graham. Not Gareth, but Garth.
Susie: Sorry.
Gareth: And Gareth is on here too. There’s too of us.
Susie: Oh, right. That may be why. pause Okay, thank you.
Bret: Alright. Well, let’s… I thank you all for participating, and I’ll see you on the list and we’ll talk again next month.
Male: And online. 1:01:52
Nick?: A pleasure meeting you guys once again, and…
Male: Bye.
Susie: Bye-bye.
Male: Bye.
End of Audio
