NARALO Monthly Teleconference 10 March 2008
Present: E Leibovitch (Chair), W Seltzer (ALAC Liaison), A Greenberg, G Shearman, S Caras, M Miranda, D Younger, J Neumann, J Levine, B Brendler, W Seltzer, J Polly
Staff: N Ashton-Hart, M Langenegger
Apologies: D Thompson, R Guerra, M Gurstein
Minutes taken by ICANN staff.
Teleconference commenced at 20:07 UTC with the roll call.
Proposed Statement to the ICANN Board on Domain Front Running - D Younger Draft of 01 March 2008
The chair noted that he did not receive any feedback after he send out the draft proposal that did not support an NARALO Endorsement of the letter.
Nobody raised any concerns with regards to the proposed statement.
It was noted that if there were comments such as the comment on RAA that was made earlier, the statement needed to be altered. It was generally felt, however, that the RAA comment was not in the scope of the current statement and that there is not enough time to alter the statement in time before the ALAC meeting.
The Chair moved to endorse the statement and to deal with the RAA comment at a later stage. The motion was carried unanimously.
The Chair asked A Greenberg to inform the ALAC at their meeting on 11 March about this motion and ask for ALAC’s support. However, it was decided that the statement should be brought to the ICANN board even if there was no support from the ALAC.
The ALAC liaison thanked D Younger for the effort he put into drafting the letter and noted that he would be happy to raise the issue at the next board meeting on 27 March.
Status Update on the At-Large Summit and NARALO Participation in it
The Chair informed the participants that the ICANN board unanimously accepted a motion to have an ALS Summit without having taken a decision regarding the budget. The board implied that the Summit should also have an educational purpose with regards to the ALSes. They should get more information about ICANN’s activities in order to better integrate them in the policy making process.
The Chair informed the participants about the Summit Working group teleconference on 5 March. (Minutes available here) and encouraged the participants to join one of the two sub working groups for the summit (content and procedure).
Outreach Initiatives (or rather lack thereof so far)
The Chair proposed to work together with staff to come up with an outreach strategy. He noted that a first step would be to identify conferences where At-Large should have a presence.
The question was raised why there was no manager for regional relations for the United States. The Staff noted that this was probably due to historical reasons and encouraged the NARALO to send in a comment in relation to the budget and operation plan consultation if it was felt that there should be a regional liaison for North America. Staff said that he would ask global partnership about this issue and point out that there was interest in the NARALO in such a position being created.
With regards to outreach efforts in North American conferences by NARALO members, Staff pointed out that there should not be any obstacles in that respect and that such requests could be made under the process by which the community requests funding for special projects outside of budgeted items.
The Chair asked the participants to send suggestions about meetings at which outreach efforts would be worthwhile for upcoming conferences to the mailing list. Staff would then create a list on the NARALO working wiki to keep track of incoming suggestions.
D Younger asked if there was a chance for At-Large to participate in the post-MOU modelling that is undertaken by the president’s strategy committee. He expressed his disappointment with the fact that some of the committee members were not elected in a bottom-up manner and did not seem to be fully involved.
Staff noted that P Dandjinou, who is an At-Large member, was involved in the strategic committee but that he, like all other members of the PSC, served in his personal capacity at the pleasure of the CEO. However, At-Large could make a request to have more direct At-Large representation if it wished to do so. Such a request could be transmitted to the CEO directly amongst other means.
The ALAC liaison to the Board agreed with this point of view and added that the President’s Strategy Committee is not one of the board’s activities. However, she could inform the board about the concerns raised by some NARALO members about the transparency of the committee.
geoTLDs (see discussion thread on .nyc)
It was generally felt that the none of the current gTLD proposals should get the endorsement of the NARALO as they did not seem to be of immediate concern to individual users.
Further action on domain tasting / front-running / AGP
There was some discussion about the validity of the current ALAC statement on domain tasting and the AGP.
The Chair suggested waiting until the GNSO statement has been discussed at the ALAC teleconference on 10 March before coming up with a NARALO statement.
A Greenberg noted that he would inform the NARALO members about the outcomes of the ALAC teleconference.
J Polly, D Younger and J Levine expressed interest in drafting such a statement.
ALAC Review
The Chair informed the discussants that the ALAC review is currently under way and invited everybody who is interested to participate.
The ALAC liaison noted that the review is expected to be over in time before the Paris conference.
Setting dates for future meetings
Everybody agreed to have the monthly NARALO teleconference on every second Monday of the Month at 1500 Eastern Time.
The meeting was adjourned at 21:07 UTC.
