Olivier Crepin-Leblond: So, good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. This is the Work Team C meeting, tele-conference call on the second of February, 2011, and the time is 19:06 UTC. Today we have a very light agenda and there was some discussion with Seth as to whether we would have this agenda or whether we would just cancel the meeting and do things on email.
But I’d like to continue with some movement in this group and perhaps we, because we have so many things to do once we will receive things from the SWOT perhaps we should get a move on with other things and plan things ahead. But first thing, we’re going to start with is the roll call, if we can have that please.
Gisella Gruber-White: We have Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Tijani Ben Jemaa, Gareth Shearman, Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Dev Anand Teelucksingh, Sylvia Herlein-Leite only on Adobe Connect, Tijani Ben Jemaa. Fouad Bajwa will be joining us in 20 minutes and no apologies made for today. And from staff we have Seth Greene, Heidi Ullrich, I believe Matthias is on the call as well, and myself, Gisella Gruber-White. Sorry, Matthias may not be on the call. Can I please just remind everyone to state their names when speaking for transcript purposes? Thank you, over to you, Olivier.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Gisella. My goodness, we seem to have a full house today so let’s have a look first at the action items from the conference call on the 19th of January. They were as follows: the first one being Seth to link the Cartagena presentation and mp3 on the financial year 12 budget to the Work Team C workspace. And this is marked as being completed. Any comments Seth?
Seth Greene: No, none. It’s toward the bottom of the page there are a number of resources related to budget.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, excellent. The next thing – Matthias to send initial email to the RALO leadership explaining the financial year 12 budget process; include a link to the At-Large FY12 budget workspace, emphasizing the need to relate requests to ICANNs Strategic Plan, etc. etc. And then Matthias will send up a follow up email to anyone of the RALOs with whom he had a good relationship with in order to move the whole process forward and this I might say has been done very successfully.
We’ve had a lot of input from the RALOs and I think we’re all quite pleased about that, so that’s marked as completed. Any comments from anyone? None? And the next action item being Heidi to add the ALAC statement on ICANNs strategic plan to the At-Large FY12 budget workspace; and that’s been done as well. I heard someone just shout out. No one has, okay, maybe my ears are hearing things.
And the last one being Heidi to include the ALAC agenda, on the ALAC agenda, the appointment of an additional member from each region. Okay, and my screen has just changed…
Heidi Ullrich: Yeah that was done, that was the proposal from Cheryl which I believe calls have gone out to the regions for those additional members.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Oh, okay. Right. Yes, that’s right I do remember that. Have we had any feedback on that yet?
Heidi Ullrich: Let me follow up with Matthias on that.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, we’ll follow up later on that then. Let’s just go through these quickly and move onto to the gist of the discussion. So now, the next item for discussion is the deadline and final reporting. I think, Seth, you might be able to enlighten us about this.
Seth Greene: Sure, thank you Olivier, I’ll certainly try. I just wanted to bring Work Team C up to speed with everything that the other Work Teams at this point know, it’s just a couple of brief points. The only deadline that the SIC and the Board were interested in was for recommendation two - the At-Large Board Director and of course that’s all been completed.
The other deadlines for the improvements projects have been self imposed by the ALAC and we’re aiming towards the end of March. So everyone should be getting into the mental state of finishing up and keeping the eye on the finish line right now, hopefully.
As far as the reporting goes, and actually Heidi and I were just talking about this, interestingly there really is not precedence for a, not much precedent for the completion of a constituency improvement review and project.
But we are hoping, and we will be talking to Legal about this, we’re hoping that we probably just use the same format that we used for an earlier status report and even the original project plan, which is basically a short recommendation by recommendation report and all of the details and things that might be of secondary interest to the Board being put in annexes at the back. So hopefully that will remain fine, but we’ll be checking into that.
And also, as far as the final reporting goes, of course Cheryl and others appointed that the final, final reporting to the Board of course is the ALAC responsibility and as a help with that the suggestion has been made that each Work Team perhaps write up a short synopsis of its work and final proposals that can very simply be dropped seamlessly into a final report by the ALAC. So that’s everything I just wanted to inform everyone of. That’s it, thank you Olivier. If there are any questions I’d be happy to answer them.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: So the floor is open for questions. And I see no questions being asked so I gather we all know what our final piece of work is supposed to be here, is it? Well let me then ask, Seth, in what form do we need to end up with our final piece of work? Are these recommendations for the ALAC? Is this going to be a report? Is it going to be a set of diagrams or are we just going to batch all of the things that we’ve done and put it on the ALACs desk?
Seth Greene: I myself would think, and please keep in mind I’m new to this as well, I myself would think that there would be a set of proposals would have to be presented to the ALAC for discussion and a decision from each Work Team. Possibly at the San Francisco meeting if that’s not too soon. Keep in mind that’s only a couple of weeks before the deadline that we’ve targeted so hopefully it’s not too soon. But a set of proposals for the ALAC; a report for the ALAC I’m guessing that then the ALAC can use to turn around and create a report, I assume, for the SIC and the Board.
One of the questions that I have actually Olivier, is looking at the simplified outline of tasks that each recommendation has been divided into, I’m a little unclear, and I think this has to be decided ultimately by the ALAC, I’m a little unclear of where the term implementation in the At-Large improvement implementation plan actually ends.
My understanding, looking at this simplified outline and other documents, is that more implementation would occur simply making the proposals to the ALAC, but I don’t know if that’s within, I actually am looking for some advice on whether that’s within the scope of these implementations, or what’s called the implementations project, or whether that’s actually beyond it and whether the literal implementation is going to happen after the improvements implementation project has ended.
So yes, my question is when does the project end – with the proposals or with some kind of actual, almost physical if you would, implementation?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay. Thank you for this question. Tijani?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, I do think that our output would be in the form of the report to the ALAC for the implementation of recommendation five and six. It is our duty and we have to issue a report about this to ALAC for their consideration so that ALAC will have the final, final, final recommendations with the implementation means to them.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, thank you, Tijani. Any other points on this? I wonder if we can hear from Cheryl who was, shall I say in charge, when the whole process started and whether she had an idea of where she sees this going. Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Certainly provided when I breathe I don’t start to cough otherwise I’ll have to go back on mute. The question that I think you’re asking me to respond to is the one that Seth raised. Is that not specifically what you’re asking me to do here as opposed to say yes it should be a report or otherwise?
There isn’t a whole set of benchmarks for us to look at in other parts of ICANN as to what constitutes the implementation is now down in SIC, because we’re actually tracking as a reviewed part of ICANN to be one of the first to have actually gone through a review and implementation and outcome cycle. So we pretty well decide how you want to do it and the way you want to do it.
From our original intent however, we would have, I think, seen the final reporting from the implementation project as the main wrapped up milestone. There would have been predictions and there will be outcomes that will roll on after that. For example, some things are basically under continuous improvement. But that’s really a hard stop on the improvements, if you want to look at a report card perspective, that have been recommendations one through thirteen out of our original review.
From specifically Work Team Cs perspective, you’ve got both the advantage and the disadvantage of the way ICANN has been doing things in its mechanisms of interacting with the wider community inclusive or us, as having shifted no less than three times while we’ve been in the review discussions, outcomes, and now implementation phase of our project from and ALAC and At-Large perspective.
Now that actually makes Work Team Cs job easier because a lot of the final reporting that I think Tijani was referring to will be saying we have now got the plan for a different model of a standing committee which involves the regions as organizations and the ALSs specifically are inclusive of any individual representation as a RALO may have; sort of hard wired proposals, for ALAC to make a new way of doing things, that fits with the current mechanisms that ICANN is using in its strategic and its budgetary cycle.
But we’ve actually had a number of the thought barriers issues that have been identified in the SWOT analysis, and have been fixed by default because the mechanisms that we’ve previously operated in and had posed some difficulties have now changed because it’s a new ball game.
So from Work Team C’s point of view, I think it’s very much a hard stop is a hard stop is a hard stop, but from the whole improvement plan I believe that you’ll find a couple of things, the least of which will be the interaction for example, things about Recommendation 13 with the improved interaction of the (inaudible 0:14:04), if other SOs and ACs and particularly in the SO/AC PDP process we’ll have to be continuing on past what is our final reporting. Does that answer your question, Olivier?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes, Cheryl and I thought you were going to speak for a minute so in the meantime I made myself dinner. I’m only kidding. No that was very, very helpful thank you very much. And I wonder whether anyone else has any questions on how Cheryl has just explained everything to us so far? Okay, right.
So I haven’t got any questions either. I do hope that the minutes will show in detail because I must admit I hadn’t taken any notes myself, but I think that there’s a real path here that we know what to do in the next calls or until the next call. And I certainly see that whilst we are getting there we’re not quite there yet. So there’s still some work to do and I’m certainly looking forward for the SWOTs to come in with the end results. But we’ll speak about this in a moment.
I wonder whether we can move onto the next part now which is, actually we’ve already kind of budged into it, point number four which is upcoming need to interact with the ALAC. Again Cheryl is supposed to speak about this. Cheryl, any additional point on that? I think we’ve pretty much covered it haven’t we?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Now I’m unmuted, yes. I’m sorry to the ease of the transcribers since we’re having this one transcripted. I guess the question on any further information is the opportunity for planning the formal interaction between the ALAC and the Work Team outcomes report recommendations that will be coming from Work Team C, but also from all the other Work Teams.
Olivier, I might, on the grounds of I don’t want to (inaudible 0:16:31) when I cough again, punt back the planning for residual reporting that’s been carried over from a couple of other meetings into the next ALAC meeting, I’ll punt that back to you because that’s your agenda.
But I would also ask that the Work Teams are given clear guidance by the ALAC, and probably here the ALAC Executive Committee, as to exactly what will be happening in the schedule in San Francisco. Are we going to have meaningful lumps of time to discuss and interact the outcomes of each of our Work Teams work or are we going to have the unsatisfactory situation of even just leadership reports being wedged into far too tiny an amount of schedule and show and tell not even managing to get done?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Cheryl, and I know that Heidi had been working on the schedule and I can see her hand is up so she’s raring to answer your question. Heidi?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes actually I’m just going to talk a little bit about what Seth and I have discussed and then ask the opinion of the Work Team members whether that would be the way to go. In terms of large chunks of time, Cheryl, we are in total agreement with you so we’re planning for the Sunday workshop, the ALAC and regional officers workshop, to have 90 minutes set aside for that. So is that going to be considered enough or should that be just a full two hours?
Then following Tuesday and Wednesday, there would be the individual meeting of each of the Work Teams. And then on Thursday we’re planning to have at least 30-45 minutes, probably 45, up front so they cannot be delayed as unfortunately happened in Cartagena an were pushed off the agenda at the end. But to have about 45 minutes for the wrap up of the Work Team reports and next steps with the ALAC so they can discuss it during that meeting.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Heidi. Sorry, was that Cheryl, did you want to answer? Cheryl is typing – so does anyone else have comments on these schedules? Or schedules as one says in the rest of the world. I think that Heidi, that’s a considerable amount of time for us to be able to work on this, I would imagine that this is quite a suitable amount of time. Seth, would you be able to say whether you think we can wrap this up?
Seth Greene: I actually am thinking that the 90 minutes during the regional and officers workshop is probably enough, though a lot of that’s a guess on my part having not been present for, at least in person, for that meeting yet. I think that we’ll have a better idea in let’s say one more or two more meetings as the Work Teams each start actually putting together their proposals and we discuss them informally with the ex-com and the ALAC. I would think we would have more of a feel for whether that’s enough time.
What I’m actually wondering about, and this is more a question, is what do you envision our then doing during the actual wrap up meeting? As Heidi said, we were thinking of 30-45 minutes and I’m just wondering at this point is that simply going to be a recap presentation by each Work Team or what would the normal procedure, well as we said, there’s no real precedent, but from everyone’s experience on the call more than my own what do you envision going on during that final wrap up concerning the improvements project?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you for your question Seth. Any comments or I’d really like to hear a bit of everyone else here, what they think. Tijani, do you have any idea on that?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: No, I think the schedule that Heidi pointed out is pretty well. I think that 90 minutes is enough, it’s okay, no problem.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Now that’s 90 minutes for everything yeah? We’re talking about overall discussion 90 minutes, that’s about what 20 minutes per Work Team.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes 90 minutes for all. I think too we discussed should it go to two hours, but I think that the focus would probably have diminishing returns after 90 minutes.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Right. Would we have presentations during those 90 minutes?
Heidi Ullrich: I think that that would be useful. Seth, I’m open to that so.
Seth Greene: I was actually imagining, if I may Heidi and Olivier, I was imagining that there would be, and again I don’t know exactly how this works, but I would imagine that the ALAC would of course have all of the proposals beforehand but that the Work Team co-chairs would present each proposal one at a time from the Work Team and a discussion from the details that it would want the ALAC to consider. I imagine the ALAC does not actually consider it right there and then, these things, but I actually don’t know.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, Tijani?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes. But Heidi I do hope that this time our 90 minutes will be really dedicated to the Work Teams because as you remember in Cartagena we didn’t have the time. We had time allocated to the Work Teams but we didn’t work, we didn’t get it.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, Tijani. We apologize for that. So what we can do is move both sessions up front so that’s basically the first or second thing that we’re discussing on Sunday, and on Thursday during the wrap-up session that would be the (break in audio).
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, Seth, your hands up.
Seth Greene: Thank you Olivier. I just wanted to, related to this, I just wanted to get back to a point that you had made regarding whether the form of these proposals would include for example, some diagrams. Of course, Work Team D will include extensive diagrams I’m sure in the proposal. Dev has come up with flow charts that are basically, don’t need any additional words they’re so complete. And my guess would be that this Work Team would have some diagrams as well. Am I correct in thinking that regarding Fouad, etc?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Well you’re actually touching on the next part which I wanted to discuss, which was the review of the tasks under recommendations five and six, to determine any next needed steps. But that can come with this and in fact I’d specifically asked Dev Teelucksingh whether he was able to, since he had mentioned earlier that he was going to be interested in Work Team C; and the question being whether one could answer some of the questions that we have in the recommendation, I think it’s recommendation five questions in our spreadsheet, which one of them asks about review current processes within At-Large used to contribute to strategic planning.
And one thought that I had, with regards to that, was that we’ve now, we’ve been through a first phase of contribution to strategic planning with the new system that the new ICANN strategic process and I wonder whether our own processes, in order to do that. Any comments, Tijani has his hand up first and then I’ll ask Dev perhaps to expand that. Tijani?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes please. I would like to as Heidi if the 90 minutes includes the debate because the most important thing is to hear from the other people of the ALAC about our work. So if it will include debate it will not be enough.
Heidi Ullrich: Well again, we could, I’m not envisioning presentations that last 22 minutes. I’m thinking of a very short discussion and then discussion, sorry a short presentation and then discussion for each of the groups or overall. So that would leave let’s say 60 minutes for discussion if we had very short presentations from each of the other groups. You don’t think 60 minutes would be enough?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: In this case I will propose that we send our work before San Francisco to the large list of the At-Large so that people who will come to San Francisco will be already informed about our work and we will present it for a very short time and we give time to the floor to discuss it.
Heidi Ullrich: Okay, excellent idea.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Heidi, one thing that I’ve heard, when one wants to gain time and not to waste time on presentations is to ban Power Point presentations. Would this be a possibility perhaps or do you think that we still need to have Power Point presentations? Because I do realize the 22 minutes for a presentation is something I kind of remembered from Cartagena. Maybe not as long as 22 minutes, but it did take a while and a lot more than the amount that it should have taken.
Heidi Ullrich: What we could do is just to have everyone organize their thoughts and have it structured properly we could limit it one slide per Work Team and we could also give you a…
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay. Cheryl is against banning the Power Points. I saw a big nice red cross. How would it fly then with the one or two pages Power Points? What do you think?
Heidi Ullrich: It would be one slide. Just limit it to one slide. And then they could, you know Tijani’s idea of sending the work in advance, we could definitely do that and really work on having everyone look at that and that would be their responsibility.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay. So one slide seems something acceptable and I gather that will incorporate both with diagrams, flow charts, and a short resume of what has been done, a summary?
Heidi Ullrich: Yeah. Well I think the slide would just be basically for their presentation and then the material that they would be sent, that the ALAC would be sent earlier prior to the meeting would include the diagrams and the summaries, etc.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay.
Heidi Ullrich: What we could also do is add those documents to, and have hard copies for one thing, but also, have them on the USB sticks that we provide so people could right away look at those on their own computers.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, excellent. Seth?
Seth Greene: Thank you Olivier. I was actually just going to lower my hand, but my thought was that I would like people to keep in mind there are, I think for some Work Teams, one slide would be easier to actually summarize everything onto then for some others. For example, Work Team D, the flow chart itself of the new process, proposed process, I believe the flow chart itself is probably more than what could probably be seen on just one slide.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Exactly right Seth. I think it’s extremely difficult, or nigh impossible to ask particularly extensive work that’s gone into some of the Work Teams to be squeezed into one slide. But that said, if we have a 22 minute slot for each of the Work Teams to hit the highlights, it doesn’t mean that it’s a 15 slide but it certainly should be able to be done in a couple of slides. But trust me Olivier, just removing an opportunity for people to pick through Power Point doesn’t make them any more concise.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay. These are just ideas I’m throwing in the arena and I’m glad that they’re generating feedback. Perhaps, I mean I also think that the one slide rule is a bit like the one child rule in China; it’s a bit extreme for everyone. Some groups might be okay with it but others might not. So, perhaps two or three slides, but as long as we stick to the limit that is going to be set then fine. I would think maybe three slides might be good because that gives a couple of diagrams and not sort of crammed diagrams, and one slide with some text on it. Do we need perhaps a slide per recommendation? What do you mean by that Dev?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: This is Dev. Exactly that, recommendation one was, that would be the main heading and this is what, brief synopsis and some of the main conclusions, and see the report for the rest of the details and questions.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Now some groups have got three or four recommendations. The present Work Team C only has two recommendations. One being a very broad strategic and operational plan and the other one being a very broad cost models. How do you see the…?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Well it’s 12 recommendations in all I believe, in the entire simplified outline, so exactly that – one slide per recommendation. So, and like I said, and as Tijani said, everybody will submit their detailed reports before San Francisco and it’s available on the USB sticks and so I think it would be just okay, this is the recommendation; here’s the ideas we’ve come up with; and see the full report for the details. And then just go to questions.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Does this Work Team think we can work with two slides? Please Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, I don’t think we have to pick the number of slides now. It will depend on what we feel is necessary to present to people. And now the most important point is to be aware that we have to prepare our work before San Francisco to send it to the staff so that they will put it on the plug disk. And also, to the list so that people will read it before coming to San Francisco. The number of slides is not important, the most important thing is to make the presentation in the shortest time so that we give time to the floor to discuss it. The most, I think that what is the result of this session is to have the feedback of the floor.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, Tijani, that’s a pretty good point, but Seth, you might have something to add?
Seth Greene: If you don’t mind yes thank you Olivier. I was just thinking that Heidi did originally say that we might be able to fit two hours for the Work Team – ALAC interaction into the session. Perhaps, from what I’m hearing, perhaps I would suggest that we actually do that; that we increase it to two hours. And if you don’t want to limit the number of slides, obviously we could limit the amount of time that each Work Team has.
Perhaps even, and I’m not sure how this sits with everyone’s sense of justice, but perhaps each Work Team doesn’t even necessarily need the same amount of time. For example, I’m thinking that if they didn’t mind I think Work Team As presentation is going to be much more straightforward than for example, need less input needs less input at that stage from the community than for example Work Team Cs or Ds.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, very fair point. And I think that we might wish to move on from this discussion, perhaps we can all go back and think a little bit more about this. The reason why I brought this forward is because Tijani earlier mentioned that there should be some interaction between the groups and some discussion. And the problem with presentations is that they take the whole allocated time and then there’s now time for discussion. So this is why I threw the idea of some limits basically. Any other question on this point, Seth, your hand is still up.
Seth Greene: Oh, I’m sorry, Olivier, I’ll take it down. Pardon me.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you. I think we should move on because time is of the essence. The next question, and we’ve already touched on it, was the idea of doing some diagrams, process diagrams from our discussion and from our next steps I guess from the At-Large recommendation five. Let’s have a look – planning, five and six, well specifically 5.1.1. Any comment on this? And Dev, would you be able to perhaps extend, for those who haven’t been in your group, explain what you’ve been doing?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, sure. This is Dev. We can use Google Drawings which is, actually this is probably the first time I’ve really used Google Drawings was for Work Team D and it’s worked out quite well. It works in a browser; anybody can view it. You can export it pdf or as an image file so you can import that into a presentation slide. And in fact, multiple persons can even work on it and edit it at the same time.
So, it’s great in that regard. I would say the only down side, the disadvantage with Google Drawings is that there’s no revision history as it is with other Google, like Google Spreadsheets and with the Google Docs itself. So that’s one caveat you have to keep in mind. So you have to like, every now and then make a back up copy so you can go back to a previous version.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: In case any vandals turn up.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Oh yes. After you draw up the particular process and we look it up and it says no, let’s go back.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay. So then let me ask the group here if for section 5.1.1 you see any interest in doing a Google Drawings of our internal processes; how they are today? And I see that Seth has put an example of Dev’s work in the chat; Cheryl is agreeing; Gareth? Gareth, you might be muted.
Gareth Shearman: No I don’t think so. Can you hear me?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I can hear you now, yes. Gareth?
Gareth Shearman: Yes?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: What do you think? Regarding, about section 5.1.1 in the recommendation implementation outline. The question is “review current processes within At-Large used to contribute to strategic planning”. And we have now got the new ICANN strategic process, which we’ve gone through one cycle, and I thought it might be interesting to have this actually mapped by using Google Drawings basically.
Gareth Shearman: Yes. Well any visualization we can put forward is going to help everyone.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, well I think that everyone is okay with that then. I haven’t seen anything against it. The question is, Dev, you have carried out this for the other group haven’t you?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Yeah. I mean there was a lot of feedback, but it helped because by trying to draw it out you got to see each step of the process and that raised a lot of questions and refinements. I think there was like five or six versions of the flow charts. But I think it works very well.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: So it’s something we could start work on right away. Cheryl, your hand is up.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thanks Olivier. I’m all supportive of the visualization, I think that’s very good, but I just think for Work Team C it might be appropriate for us to have more than one drawing on 5.1.1. Because what we had was a very different situation when we were reviewed, so us doing a snapshot drawing for the VEN, and spend more time on it I admit: the bigger, better, bolder, more interactive drawings will be the “where we are now.”
Because Work Team C is one of those where there’s been a significant shift from what was happening, and what was even possible to happen when we were reviewed as opposed to where we are now, I think a couple of drawings would be far more advantageous then just a single one.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl. In fact, I think it’s an excellent idea and I just wonder whether it might be possible for you to help with the input for “what was then” since, well I certainly wasn’t there then, but I’m here now. See what I mean? Or for anyone else who was there then would be able to bring the input for that. I’m looking for an answer please. Cheryl, is this possible? You are muted. You’re not muted anymore now.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I’m not muted? I thought I was muted. I should be muted.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Well now you’re not. Okay, yes is the answer my text. So okay, excellent.
Heidi Ullrich: Cheryl you’re not muted. Oh, we can hear you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. I don’t know why because I’d gone through great efforts to mute while I was coughing. Olivier, it’s not a complicated thing to look at what’s happened and in fact part of the discussion in the “what happened” that we had with the community was why this recommendation ever got up in the review process. The interaction and the involvement and any type of ownership let alone response to things that ALAC and At-Large and the regions were contributing to the strategic and the financial processes, much of the process that ICANN went into.
When we were reviewed, it was a totally one way absolute black hole and quite unsatisfactory. And we can go back to some of the earlier discussions and notes from the Budget and Finance Subcommittee when it was initially set up in the standing committee in the ALAC to see what the snapshot should review. So I’m saying yes, but I’m also saying it’s not particularly hard or extensive. It’s a “things were not good” and having something that just all got sucked into ICANN and then the answer is no, being sent out shouldn’t be too difficult to draw.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl, but I think that part of the question there though was the mapping of the ALAC internal process rather than the black box in which the process was going to as far as ICANN was concerned. Were there any specific paths within At-Large? The ALAC internal process was meetings based. Okay, right okay, I think we’ve…all in the notes of the meetings. Okay, excellent.
Well I think we can then move on. Part number 5 basically, “review of the task under recommendation five and six to determine any needed next steps”; could we all turn to that sheet please, which is the Work Team Cs simplified At-Large improvements implementation outline. And do we have time to look at each box?
I think recommendation six we can move till next time, but specifically recommendation five – strategic ops plan – and what output we’re going to do for each one of these tasks. Do you think that’s a good idea? Any comments on that or…? No comments on this so 5.1 strategic planning ALAC processes, consider scheduling regular meeting of ALACs Finance and Budget Subcommittee; well that’s something which we’ve already said we’re going to do so, and we’ve asked, do we have here we asked for regional input? Oh okay, that’s Cheryl who is basically describing, very clearly actually, how the process used to work.
Regional input to Director of At-Large who added it to their department request and it just went “poof” gone. Right, thank you Cheryl, for this precision knowledge.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: There is no input so far from the regions.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: No input so far from the regions with regards to the SWOTs do you mean?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes the SWOTs.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes, but we’re not speaking with regards to the actual strategic planning itself. We did get plenty of input.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: I know. I mean the feedback of the regions is not obvious.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Well one has to sustain it I guess. And maybe the SWOTs came at a time that there was just so much else going on at the same time. Looking at the improvement outline, 5.1.1 – so we decided to do some diagrams out of this. 5.1.1 – well the barriers and the measures to follow up and so on, this will all work with our SWOT so maybe we can discuss this when we actually have the full input from the SWOTs. And then 5.2.1 – review parent processes within At-Large used to contribute to operational planning – this I believe also would really benefit from a diagram. And I can help with that one as well since we’ve just gone through an operational planning part, exercise, so I think that’s probably quite helpful.
And then of course, the barriers and the measures that will be again through the SWOT, so we probably have to wait on this. And then the last one – review ongoing At-Large staff support levels and budget allocations – this is probably something which Heidi will be able to contribute to when the time comes with our final report. Is this correct Heidi?
Heidi Ullrich: Yes. We’ll be able to contribute to that and I think most of you know that the post for the At-Large coordinator has been listed and is open. So we’re taking applications for that position which is very good news.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: That’s excellent news and we hope that this post will be filled very soon. And certainly that would actually be an action item which would be affected and which we could then close completely as far as this Work Team is concerned. Then 5.3.1 – ALAC and staff should develop an annual support agreement – how is this coming along?
Seth Greene: Olivier, I have been asked to look into that. I’m sorry; I have to admit it slipped through the cracks. I will turn to it as soon as the meeting is over; I’ll look into that, I’d forgotten about it.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: That’s okay Seth, we still have time so let’s just make sure, I just want to sort of start finalizing what we still have to do. And then for the recommendation six I think we can discuss it the next time because there’s only two things in there and it’s just review of additional At-Large information that would be useful to financial reporting and regarding the meeting accommodations, well that’s something which is a done deal already so it doesn’t require, really, any input from us.
Perhaps, and we haven’t got that much time until the end of this meeting, shall we move to the next part which is mapping of SWOT analysis points thus far. And thus far we don’t seem to have received any input at all from the regions, as Tijani has mentioned. I wonder whether we could have some type of reminder to be sent out perhaps. We were in the AFRALO meeting a little bit earlier and Tijani made a quite a strong reminder in his region and I wonder whether all of us who are from the different regions could not only have a reminder during the meeting, but also a reminder on the list. Seth, I saw briefly your hand come up.
Seth Greene: Yes, I’m sorry. I thought Olivier, you were going to ask that we email, that the staff email out a reminder and I was going to say of course. Matthias and I were just talking about this today; how to get the regions to respond a bit more robustly. The deadline given had been much later in February, recall, so my guess, am I naïve to think that the coordinator, the volunteer coordinators in each region are off collecting the info from the ALSs and just haven’t put it on the confluence page yet, or do you think that work is actually in progress?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Well, judging from what Dev has just written in the chat, which is that LACRALO has done a Google Doc for SWOT analysis , I would imagine that there are some regions currently working on it and they are just waiting until they finalize their results in order to type them in the actual SWOT itself. So we’re not past the deadline yet, although some regions are closer to the deadline than others. So, perhaps just a kind, friendly note to remind everyone that this is still going on, so as to focus everyone on this, and then we can move.
I think a majority of what we need is already on there, I can’t imagine the regions coming up with doubling the size of our SWOT so far…
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Olivier, I’ve come off mute to say virtually that. It’s actually a fairly extensive SWOT analysis. It might be useful to say to the regions that it is possible for them just to say “we agree”. Because some of them, that’s all they will need to say. So what we have seen is a number of regions, APRALO included, do a mirror exercise on the work of several of the Work Teams including the ones that are looking at how policy is even thwarted from the edges. And that seems to be, I think, a very positive thing. But we’re nowhere near the deadlines we set them yet.
But a gentle reminder, but also I would have thought a guiding hand, this is one of those situations where I think picking up the phone or having a private email would be a very good thing. And as the Google Doc example that LACRALO’s put out, perhaps sharing any links of anything that any other region is doing on this topic can inspire another region to say oh well we’re report or comment our thoughts that way as well.
Has APRALO, for example, asked the ALSs on any input on this, the answer is no. Will it have time to between now and the deadline, the answer is guess what, no. Because our meeting where it would become an action item happens after the deadline has passed. Again. So you are going to get input, but it’s going to be from the usual suspects, i.e. the leadership of the regions. It has not done what it ideally should do and that is go out to the ALSs; at least in my region.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Is there anything that we have done wrong, Cheryl, perhaps in asking the regions? We didn’t ask the right way or in the right manner? And in fact this question is not only for Cheryl but for everyone else on the desk.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I mean I’m totally biased. My answer is yes. We have done something wrong – we asked too late in the process. We’ve identified a barrier to policy development, which is based on how long and the refractory period between meetings that happen at regional and many individual ALS levels, and then we’ve done exactly the same thing ourselves.
We’ve done 30- and 45-day key point periods knowing damn well that some regions don’t meet at the beginning of those calls for input and if they do they’re not going to have feedback if they decide in meeting A, the start point, that they will reach out to their ALSs in the next 30 days to get some involvement and get information to bring back. And that comes back 30 to 45 days later. And then we’ve already had a deadline pass.
So yes, we’ve done something terribly wrong and that is, ask too much of people as volunteers, in too short a period of time when there is too much else on their plate. We were asking them to discuss things like geo-region review and comment and actually put the information into the FY12 budget and strategic planning documents that have been recently done. So they’ve been doing the actual work, as opposed to doing the work of commenting on how the actual work might be done.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: That’s a very interesting point. With regards to that timing, I certainly take your comment on the short amount of time that they had, but we did say that it was going to be two months and for APRALO specifically that spun two meetings didn’t it Cheryl? Hand went up, hand went down.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: APRALO meets on the fourth Tuesday of every month. If you look at the agenda of last month, this was a matter that got little, if any, discussion and no action items were raised from it. Now, a interaction with the regional leadership should go a little bit further than getting it in a day or two before the meeting is held on the agenda. So then the second meeting will be the end of February meeting.
And yes, it went over two months, but unless Matthias and Seth are working with the regional leadership the APRALO did not say okay, Fred Murtz, you’re going to reach out to all of our ALSs and ask them for input. That wasn’t even an AI that happened at the meeting that this matter was discussed.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Well that is interesting because I was at that meeting.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I know you were. And the secretary had not sent anything out to any of the ALSs. So when we look at actions arriving from the last meeting at the next meeting, Olivier, what’s going to happen?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, well right. It certainly is too late to cry on that one, but fair enough. We’ll have to try and see which way we go and see how much input we get. Perhaps one of the action items then here is just a reminder from Seth and pointing to the great work LACRALO has done so far as Cheryl says, to sort of show what other regions have done.
I have seen some great work being done by the regions in the past few weeks. And in a way I do also think that we did start this year at 110 miles an hour and just a lot was being asked from our regional leadership all simultaneously, all at the same time. Hopefully next year we will be able to have a bit more time for all these processes, whether it’s the strategic or the financial processes and therefore we’ll be able to also carry out work outside of those things.
Any other comments on this before we move onto the next level? And if I can find my pages again. so the mapping of SWOT analysis points thus far I would think that we shouldn’t start yet. We can do at our next meeting. And we could perhaps even, well if we all work separately on this and look at, come to the next meeting with answers rather than with questions and trying to work out what our answers our going to be then we can do that and certainly discuss it on the list.
I have seen no traffic on the Work Team C list between conference calls and this is a bit of a concern to me as well. It might be a failure of both of the chairs, or probably me even more than anyone else, of not kicking and shouting and so on, but hopefully we can remedy this. I see agreement from Tijani. Right, any other business?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If I may Olivier?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Please Cheryl.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It affects a topic that I guess all the Work Teams will be discussing and that is the wrapping up phase and the final reporting. It strikes me that there’s opportunity for part of what we’re grumbling about now to happen to find some solutions and that is this business of people actually doing the work for the pressing need of public comments and closure dates and not having, getting on with the job as opposed to getting on with writing the book on how the job is done. It might be that each of the regions could benefit by having the work of the Work Teams taken up in a specific region or focus for them to do a “what does this mean for us” analysis.
I’m not saying it needs to be full blown SWOT analysis, but I do think that there’s an awful lot of opportunity as you see the extensive work that APRALO has been doing on its own internal policy input and inreach and outreach activities. That stuff that really was, I guess, kick started by some of what was happening in some of the Work Teams that are resulting from the implementation program that we’re running at the moment. And I wouldn’t want to see that under recognized.
It’s not really part of our jobs for the ALAC and its final review process, but I am wondering if the Work Team or the leadership of the Work Team or all of the Work Teams, rank and file, might benefit from being puddle up together at some point in the not too distant future and seeing about what, if anything, has come out of the work they’ve done and the analysis they’ve undertaken and the recommendations they’ve made to the ALAC that might benefit At-Large.
Notice my differentiation there: “If there is such opportunity in ALAC which needs to facilitate that.” I guess I’d put that as business to be looked at as a possible future action item. It might come under the secretariats meeting, I don’t know, but I just think how opportunities are I hate to see lost is all.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Do you think this is something we could discuss in San Francisco then?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I would very much like that to be the case yes. I don’t think we have time to do the actual discussions, but we can discuss how it can be done.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Well if somebody can take note of that, which obviously is not something from within Work Team C, but for the other meeting, that would be appreciated. So we can have that in the agenda in San Francisco. Thank you Cheryl, very helpful. Any other business, any other comments or…? I see no one putting their hands up so Seth, the confirmation of the next meeting – I understand there is an ICANN holiday break, is that correct?
Seth Greene: Oh, I’m sorry Olivier, I didn’t know that.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Well it says on the agenda, so I’m not quite sure. I wasn’t aware of that either till I read it.
Seth Greene: No I think Heidi did me the favor of adding that? Heidi did you add that for me?
Heidi Ullrich: I did not see that no, and no, there is no holiday upcoming.
Seth Greene: I am going to take that off the agenda and I don’t know how it got there; maybe my own wishful thinking.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: That’s really pleasant. Oh well.
Gisella Gruber-White: 16th of February for the next meeting?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: 16th of February, that’s correct. At 19:00 UTC; any comments, is this time more suitable then our previous time for everyone?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: It’s better for me.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay, so for at least one person it’s better. Perfect. Well I think that’s it for today. Thank you very much for attending. We’ve got a whole set of minutes that I hope we’ll all reread through and although I don’t see many action items from this meeting, I do believe that we have moved forward and certainly some of the discussion here have been very fruitful and hopefully we can follow on.
I hope that the list is going to come alive again, and for this I will set a couple of messages out there and move on. Thank you very much. Good morning; good afternoon; good evening. Dream in OCL. Yes, CLO I shall. Thanks very much goodnight, good bye, and Happy New Year to everyone as well, absolutely: the Year of the Rabbit.
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