Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. This is the ALAC Executive Committee conference call on the 24th of May, 2011 which was supposed to start 15:30 UTC and is starting instead at 16:18 UTC. And we're going to go quickly through the roll call, which means that we're all there, that's Cheryl, Evan, Tijani, myself and the only person that's missing is Carlton Samuels, and for staff we are supposed to have Gisella and --
Gisella Gruber-White: I'm here. Sorry, sorry.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Gisella and Matt for staff have I missed anyone? No, it sounds like we can proceed forward.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Olivier, the only thing is just to check with Gisella with Carlton's apology for this meeting as well, because that should be recorded as an apology.
Gisella Gruber-White: Thank you, Cheryl, and it's been noted as an apology on the Adobe Connect Room.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Perfect, thank you. So the first thing is to go through the action items and we have two sets of action items, one from the 18th of May and one from the 24th of May, and because we had two calls.
And so starting with the 18th of May action items, and the first one is Cheryl and others to work with Matt and Roman ensuring archival and orphan -- whoa, this is an interesting one, ensuring archival orphaned conference pages are found. I think we all know what it is about, finding orphaned conference pages in the archival, et cetera and this action item is open. Cheryl, have you been --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I have done little more than give Matt some additional information he requested, so I will leave this as a work in progress.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And Matt any luck on finding those missing pages?
Matt Ashtiani: I've spoken to Roman and I've spoken to Carol and they've assured me that every single page has been moved over. I told them that, although I don't know the issue in depth, I know Cheryl had said that there are in fact some pages missing, they said if we can find out the pages missing, that they can go back and look and see what happens. But that everything should have been moved over.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Now, may I enlarge this action item on this, by also asking that you have Roman check the www.atlarge.ICANN.org website, because on that one you still have several mentions of the old system, the social text system, and especially on the language pages.
If you go into the French pages, you'll find that nearly all of the links go to social text; it's just an absolute mess. And so you know the conference is one thing, but the ALAC pages on the main website are also particularly important since of course it's the front portal. I just -- every time I go on there I have a fit.
Matt Ashtiani: Okay.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you. Okay, next action item -- or any other comments? Nope. So next, Jean-Jacques Subrenat and Evan Leibovitch to be interim Co-Chairs of the At-Large Working Group on future challenges, and Marc Rotenberg to be interim ALAC liaison and rapporter that's still an open action item. It's a work in progress as we heard Jean-Jacques is now taking the lead on this.
The action item we have to start with, I guess is to have that doodle being sent out. Gisella, was that sent out?
Gisella Gruber-White: No, the doodle's been -- the doodle's been set up, I've sent it to Seth for him to double check on his timings and I've chased him again on that one, so it should be going out as soon as he comes online.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you very much. Then we move to the next thing, ALAC members to review all standing and ad hoc, At-Large Working Groups prior to Singapore, which will be revived, which are to be closed. That of course is something which we said will take us to the Singapore meeting, and we obviously have a session there.
Have we sent an email out to ask everyone to look at those at least in their regions? I don't notice any -- I don't think anything's been done. I mean, we did speak last time on the next ExCom call that we might just deal with all of that in Singapore, but I don't want to do is to arrive in Singapore, and for everyone to suddenly think, oh, I didn't know that we had a Working Group about this or about that, or what is that Working Group about.
Perhaps send an email for them to at least familiarize themselves with what the current Working Groups are, and familiarize themselves with who is on those current Working Groups. Any comments or suggestions? None.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Look, I do. I think the reason I keep saying let's do this in Singapore is you know you need to have people sitting around a desk, stick it up on the white board in front of them and you know make them pay attention to it. We can put out you know calls for things until the cows come home, but you know there is human bandwidth issue.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so how about this then, as NAI for the Singapore meeting that we would have the briefing material having the list, sort of printouts of those Working Groups with the member listed on there.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: No, we just whack it up on the screen in front of everyone.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: But some of those pages are not dated, Cheryl. You can go into some of those Working Groups and you just -- yeah.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (Crosstalk) I think that is part of my point, but that can changed live to ear.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, next -- next stuff to put on the Singapore agenda, the ALAC Registrar meetings on Singapore compliance agenda that I understand has been done.
Gisella Gruber-White: For the Registrar meeting, sorry is that the one you're referring to? No.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: ALAC Registrar meetings on Singapore compliance agenda. I thought there was more the compliance people.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep.
Gisella Gruber-White: Yes, that needs to scheduled on the -- when we go through the main schedule on the Sunday during the ALAC and Regional Leadership, once the agenda has been defined for that, or on the Tuesday subject to availability.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. At the moment, I sense that Tuesday is particularly busy and Sunday is freeing itself up, if we're not going to be able to see the GAC on Sunday, or is this --
Gisella Gruber-White: Sorry, an update on that, you have received in you inbox in the meantime, Jeanie got back to me with regards to the GAC meeting. It is at this stage confirmed on Sunday afternoon. My only fear was I've heard that the GAC and the Board are looking to meet on Sunday afternoon, that appears to be from four to six and that is on the revised schedule that I sent through to the ExCom now, and she says that obviously last minute, they could spin the sessions prior to that to actually prepare for the GAC Board meeting, but as it stands now, she hasn't heard anything, and we're scheduled from two to three.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, so we don't have a --
Gisella Gruber-White: To be quite honest the GNSO put their schedule on hold because of that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, right, thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And I -- when I read that, Cheryl for the record, when I read that in your email Gisella, I thought you know I think we need to be extremely flexible with our Sunday afternoon this time.
Gisella Gruber-White: Yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And I don't think there is any downside to that.
Gisella Gruber-White: No, I just hate to put the compliance in when everyone is going to walk off and go listen to the GAC and Board meeting.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Exactly, right.
Gisella Gruber-White: So Sunday morning is more maybe -- late morning is more of an option for compliance, after the team's meeting.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Bearing in mind that early morning is going to be also a little bit split with the new -- well, the meeting which is set to happen with the developing countries work shop.
Gisella Gruber-White: Yes, sorry, Olivier, yes, because that's correct -- that's the meeting I was referring to with the Katim meeting from nine --
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Katim meeting, yes.
Gisella Gruber-White: -- which will have -- which will be all the more interesting, because apparently it does have French and Spanish interpretation.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: That's correct, yes. Okay, so what --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We usually have those interpreters at that time.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes.
Gisella Gruber-White: Yes, I think it's in the main room, so we have our own interpreters, but --
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: And they'll have theirs.
Gisella Gruber-White: And they'll have theirs, yes.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So next Technology Evolution on WHOIS Service on the Singapore WHOIS agenda, and that also I believe is in process.
Gisella Gruber-White: Sorry, the WHOIS?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: WHOIS, yes.
Gisella Gruber-White: Sorry, Olivier, yes, no that has been scheduled, Matt has been -- has taken care of that with Alice and the timing for that is on Tuesday, the 21st of June from 3:30 to 4:30.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Tuesday, okay, perfect. And the FY 12 budget decisions on ALAC Singapore agenda.
Gisella Gruber-White: We don't have that scheduled yet.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Right, so I guess we're probably going to have to use that as a gap filler for ourselves, if we want to remain as flexible as possible with the GAC and with others. Any comments on this? And the gap filler doesn't mean it's demoted by the way, it's particularly important, but it's just something that involves us.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It's also going to be a non productive discussion other than moaning and groaning about things at that point in time. I mean the budget won't have been approved, but we'll be at a point when that is about to happen, and there's not a whole lot we can do at that Singapore meeting, if it hasn't been done by then, yeah, boohoo.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, perhaps there is worth in looking at the projects that will be funded or at least partially funded and speak about those.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (Crosstalk) planning, yes. We have to do some planning on probabilities, yes, but they will be recommended, but not approved.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: They won't be approved, exactly.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The provisional planning but that's very generic stuff and actually that's where having Matt in the room on those conversations is going to be very important.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: A lot of it, you know comes into the purvey of what he's been doing up until now. Because we are going to pick your brains absolutely ruthlessly and shamelessly, you realize don't you Matt.
Matt Ashtiani: It's the typical --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It's not just your policy talents and good looks we're after.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So the next thing is the staff to email ALAC list of requests, comments and proposed ICANN process for handling requests for cross removal -- for removal of cross ownership restrictions on existing gTLDs, that was a long enough title. And that we've already discussed earlier in the ALAC call, something which, is it Alan who is going to deal with.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay? Next ExCom members to liaise with the Board contacts to get feel for Board feedback to expect -- regarding JAS Working Group, and that action item is off (inaudible), that's all happened, that's in process.
Staff to email action items from ALAC and GAC meeting on 16th of May to Heather, that's been done. Have to email ALAC for input regarding future ALAC Registrar meetings, what questions do we want to ask of the Registrars that's been completed and the question has been asked in the ALAC call just before, and we also take note of the PEDNR work which might answer some of those questions, and might initiate some -- some information that will be used -- or usable by users.
Staff to note on the Wiki that educational materials to be developed collaboratively by ALAC and Registrars, must be contingent on recommendations coming out of PEDNR… oh well there we are. Done.
Any comments or suggestions from the action items of the 26th, bearing in mind -- from the 18th, sorry, bearing in mind that there are action items for the 24th that -- and I'm looking at that page, it's a blank page, so that set of action items is missing, either that, or we did nothing on the 24th. Any comments. No comments. Well, I note that the action items of the ALAC meeting of the 24th of May are empty.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's five seconds ago, well no, its 15 minutes ago. And Gisella did say that the --
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Oh, sorry, I thought it was the ExCom meeting.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (crosstalk) …because of she only had 15 things to do at once and said it will make you look at the transcripts.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I'm noting that I'm particularly disappointed, but never mind.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: God, and you thought I was hard to work with, team.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So there was one -- one item, I see an action item I've written on my notepad, and it's so scribbled so badly, that I can't read it. ALAC and Regional leadership to set up notifications on something -- I'm afraid we're going to have to pass on this one, and we will work from the action item list that will be drafted in the next few days. So we'll move over the items for discussion and decision. And the first one is the open policy issues, the open comments issues --
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Bored now, done, move on.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: That's what I was going to say, being done. The next one is review of JAS Working Group and decision for Board, At-Large, GAC participation in the JAS Working Group meeting as per the Board's suggestion, and that has been discussed and that has been voted, so the question now comes to what do we do next.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Someone needs now to set up this call, it's all very nice have it in theory, but Olivier I did want to raise something with you in this meeting, as opposed to raise with you in your ALAC meeting. I wouldn't assume that the Katim interchange has clearly been seen as over taking the action items with Alice out of our meeting with Heather, because I would assume that Heather may about what Katim is doing but GAC does not. So I think we just need to make sure we -- we dot our i's, cross our t's, and engage everyone here, and I would make very certain that Heather and Alice, because Alice has specified in the AIs out of that meeting with Heather --
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: -- that this is an opportunity. If we have you know Board doing something and GAC doing something and ALAC doing something else, you know a little smart planning will go a long way here. Otherwise, we have people duplicating effort and getting their noses out of joint.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, thank you for your comment, and in fact I think one important thing that we need to do -- well there are two things really, the first one being the political implications of the decisions that were taken in the ALAC call, and certainly the importance with regards to giving the green light for such a call to take place, the call being the JAS, et cetera, et cetera. That's one thing we need to inform the GNSO about this, as soon as possible.
The second thing that we need to do is of course to make sure that all parties are well aware of this, and traditionally I think we've been perfectly good at being good communicators across -- across SOs and ACs and obviously I agree with you, we have to advise the GAC and not only Heather, but also carbon copying Alice in there, and we also have to advise, -- I would imagine we have to advise other members of the Board, and perhaps the Board secretary as well, or would you -- because that is a significant step.
From the Charter, which says, you can only correspond -- the JAS can only correspond upon the Board via the chartering organizations. And this green light which we are now giving to having a call where both parties can be on the same line, or sacrilege.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh, it's not, because the proposal for such an interchange came through the proper party -- through the proper party line and there is absolutely nothing to say. This is not a... Let me start that sentence again, picking up on something Evan said, this is not a PDP process, it's just an implementation issue. If we had had such a unified Charter as was agreed to when we created the joint Working Group between the ALAC, the GNSO, the ccNSO, and the NSO, which put together DSS Work Group, then you'd have a very different beast. But you don't. You've got this interesting little creation.
ALAC as an Advisory Committee has a direct interchange mandate with the Board; we are an Advisory Committee to the Board. So if push comes to shove, guess who we can tell people to shove things. It's not -- there is no question as to whether or not it is in our right and reasonable processes to have a meeting with the GAC and the Board.
We're generously including the JAS Work Group people, because those that are outside of the ALAC, and indeed the GNSO, because everything ALAC does is absolutely inclusive. But it's not something that can be seen as obstructable, it can’t be obstructable.
Evan Leibovitch: Olivier, I'm actually wondering why we keep going around the block on this. I mean, I guess I'm really tired of -- I'm really tired of well what about the GNSO. We're dealing with things; we're working within the Charter, if somebody else wants to burst a blood vessel, that's no longer my business.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, and I must say Alan is doing a fantastic job as our liaison, he has --
Evan Leibovitch: He is, but I'm starting to get to -- I'm starting to get to the point where this is coming across as a deliberate obstruction, that we need to constantly have one eye over our shoulder of what will GNSO say and right now I'm tired of it.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Evan.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And I hear what you're saying, Evan, but what we need to realize is -- well, trying it put -- let me start that again. To put this in perspective, I have operated in a whole lot of different parts of ICANN, and I've had this tune played with different words being sung to it in just about every other part of ICANN I played in.
Evan Leibovitch: Coming from the same source, or is it just a common tactic?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I've heard -- normally if you say GAC to some members of the GNSO, you'll get a visceral reaction – they distrust, dislike and do not understand why it exists so much. But the same thing happens between the cc and the gTLD communities.
There is a lot of residual crapolla that we've actually waded a lot through and things are in many ways more open and more cohesive and more interactive than they were, and things like Cross-Community Work Groups are only a couple of years old in concept, let alone in practice.
The first problem is the Work Group that actually had you know actually had ceased to operate it was when ccNSO did its fast track program of ccTLD IDNs. And therefore there was a forcing of the gTLD community interest into that Work Group because it is something they think we thought they could obstruct up until then.
Evan Leibovitch: But based on current conversations, based on what Olivier's been saying, if GNSO has its way, these things won't even happen again. And like I just can't be bothered worrying about that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: What I'm saying is nothing that's happening now is obstructable, just continue playing appropriate role in an appropriate way, dotting the i's and crossing our t's. And whence we have -- for example, it should not be unrelated in the minds of those who know how to do a bit of prior planning to prevent pitfall performances will indeed survive; that when you have a program running in Senegal that's talking about ICANN aid, ability to developing countries, there's a clear agenda coming out of the works here, and not everyone is going to be happy about it.
But we, because it fits in with we are wanting to do and what our principles are, are a key part of that, and we'll just operate accordingly. I think what's happening is just the necessary bit of teenage angst, for the want of a better word, yes, it's frustrating, but it's looking good, even from an outsider's perspective. It is looking good.
Evan Leibovitch: I hear you, all I'm saying is I'm just tired of it, and let's move on and the next time someone publishes somebody and something in circle ID, or goes on this, or goes to this room or mail or whatever, I -- to me I would just ignore it and move on. We do what we have to do and we have precious little volunteer time to be spending running after things.
How much time of JAS has already been spent answering questions when we know the people asking the questions really don't care about the answers.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep. And I hope that -- let's move forward with the last call that neither Olivier or I could make, but --
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Right. So I think what we should do now is to look at how we're going to -- to email, well I guess it would Katim, and what proposal we're going to make. The discussion the last time I was on the JAS call, and it wasn't the one that Cheryl just said, it wasn't the one this week, but the one last week, was that the standard JAS call timing slot would be a slot that would invite the Board and the GAC to join, is that correct?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's correct.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Evan?
Evan Leibovitch: That's -- I still think -- I think that's still on the books. But on the other hand --
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Any discussion about this today or not?
Evan Leibovitch: No. But when you think about it, the Working Group has always been an open Working Group, I mean we can extend an explicit invitation, but there's nothing stopping people from showing up, from out of the blue. In fact, that happened today with Alex Decouro, who I haven't heard from or seen since the day the Working Group started, and yet, he was quite the participant today.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That's what I thought. But it does mean that this is a time, this is to assist the JAS Work Group people. They probably don't need another thing in their agenda'd lives to find another hour somewhere, right. If we organize it for some time during a normal scheduled call, that should make their lives easier. I think my battery is running, and I might have to be going here in a while.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So I would say it's going to be either the Friday the 27th or Tuesday the 31s or Friday the 3rd, it's one of these slots. Is it up to us to make a list of the different slots and ask both the Board and the GAC or those selected members of both sides to say when can you come, or what would be the process?
Evan Leibovitch: Oh, I just now see sending a doodle out to the GAC membership.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, first thing we would probably just -- first send an email to explain that they would get a doodle. First thing we have to explain that what we voted on.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: What you should be doing first, if I may, is -- yes, we know those times, we respond Katim's coffee with everybody else that the other thing got copied on, and we say to facilitate sitting in with the already very busy day of Work Group schedules, here are the following times and dates that have already scheduled for Work Group meetings, it would be sensible, in our view, if such a parity to Singapore meeting and Q&A session on the second milestone report was conducted in one of those time slots, via Chair of GNSO, via Chair of ALAC, Dea Katim representing the Board, can you please let us know to whom should we send the invitation to consolations and agendas to.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, that makes sense.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, I'm going to have to switch batteries, hopefully it will succeed.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Good luck.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: How's that?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: You're not here anymore, you've disappeared.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Ha, ha, ha, very funny.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, that's one thing. Have we -- we've got that recorded and we'll I guess, we'll work from the recording to -- I'll work with Seth to draft this. Seth, you're here now, I gather.
Seth Greene: Yes.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Welcome.
Seth Greene: Thank you, sorry.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (Crosstalk) said it.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: You are aware -- well, you are all aware that someone is processing and be annoyed but anyway; we'll have to see anyway. So the next thing is the -- well, there's an agenda item in there which is missing, and that's also the one about the EG8, that's one which I just wanted to tell you what the next thing is, I will be emailing the statement tonight. I'm hoping that we got -- we have received the translation, Seth?
Seth Greene: I'm tracking that now, Olivier.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: If we haven't, we really need to get on to translation and get that French translation, over. I'll email the different people that I managed -- that I mentioned on the ALAC call and so that is not likely to bring any feedback or anything like that. What I will do also is to carbon copy or maybe send a copy of the message which was sent of course to the ALAC list, but I will also send it to the people at ISOC, so [Lynn Sentamore] and [Constance Beaumalier] and Marcus [Comer] - various places to make our message known, and I might… And I actually wanted to find out from you, whether you have -- you think it would be a good idea to send it to the IGC governance list., I know that the ISOC and various other organizations have also sent their statement to the IGC governance list.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Fair enough, works for me.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: It is important I think for our message to be heard and send the message that came from the membership it's something really interesting. So I noticed that Seth is going to email Christina again for the translation, we'll have to see. Any comments or questions or otherwise, we'll move onto item number 4.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, Olivier, I think that you have to send it also to the [Anti-Governance Focus] and to the ISOC, which is a good idea.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you Tijani.
Evan Leibovitch: Tijani, what about the AfrICANN group?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: We, yes, so we can send it to the AfrICANN group, yes, with the videos. Even if it is not all civil society people, but it's not the problem.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: We will send a copy to the Board and a copy of Rod Beckstrom as well. I understand that both Peter Dengate Thrush and Rod are in the meeting, but they have not been offered speaker slots, so they just participants. I don't know whether anyone has followed the discussions that took place. I had the chance to look at couple of minutes of discussions this morning, and I then feel asleep. Right.
Part number 4, yes 4, ICANN finance decisions regarding requests for additional funding. This is quite a broad subject. We have discussed it a lot in the ALAC call, do we have any more to discuss on that?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think we do. Inasmuch as we've got that fall back, as you said, of you know 40 to 60 to 90 minutes of our time can be slotted in and is otherwise occupied, planning to -- but I am concerned that there is going to be a considerable amount of administrative hand holding facilitation, working smarter not harder type stuff, that's going to have to happen, with a lot of these projects, particularly the ones that happened to be offered fairly equitably to each region with the exception of Asia Pacific.
That I'm not going to stop saying that but that's just me being a bitch. The -- but I'm very good at that. The problem isn't the now I guess, it's just a problem we need to be aware of when these things come to pass in the next financial year, there is going to be a staff assistance bandwidth issue, unless we have someone already getting themselves prepped up, and I'm not sure that any of our over worked and under paid staff have got the time to even think about what some of these projects might involve from their perspective.
So two things bother me, that bothers me and the fact that until this is signed off none of it is guaranteed and it is perfectly possible that funding that has been “approved” still doesn't happen. And I'm very cautious about raising expectations and then having them only to be disappointed upon the regions.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl. Any comments on this? Well certainly I agree with you, Cheryl, on this point, it's one thing getting the money, it's another thing actually getting the project done and getting it done to satisfaction. We might have not had much funding but some projects had some funding, what I do notice some projects are being funding by other means, they have been put under another budget, certainly language services have covered some of the projects, and various other things in there. Then again, looking at what have been funded so far, it doesn't look like an overbearing amount of additional work.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Have you ever tried to even spend $200 as a non staff accountable person in an ICANN budget, Olivier?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Ah, now you're asking me the hard questions, and I must admit that the answer is no, not so far. I have tried to extract I think it was $1,000 or a couple thousand dollars for drinks in a meeting in Europe and that wasn't that easy.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, what you can actually spend more in staff time making something happen, then you actually have allocated in the grand (inaudible).
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, I guess, I mean this as we all know; these are not the final improved things are they? They're the ones -- sorry, approved things, they are tentative at the moment. I do note that we heard from Sebastian on some of these requests, and he has asked on a number of occasions if we had to choose between the GA -- GAs in each region, well between a GA in each region or an At-Large summit, what would our preference be? It appears the At-Large summit is the preference and that's indeed something, and then again how likely are we going to get anything from it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: And that's something near and dear to his heart, and that's fantastic, but you know --
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: But anything I think we shouldn't be too disappointed, I can understand some of the cautiousness with which finance is allocating funds at the moment, and I really hope that next year, it will and the first thing I will hope is that the same people are there, and that we don't have to repeat -- we've repeated yearly, and that we have some kind continuity and the other thing that I hope is that the financial situation will be different or better or improved, and at that point, they will be able to say yes, let's do that.
It is a great disappointment to see that outreach is not being given attention when I have a feeling, and this is just a personal feeling that ICANN will be criticized externally for having failed on its outreach efforts, at least before the launch of the new gTLD process.
Evan Leibovitch: Olivier, my concern is not so much that they did what they did, okay? I mean, money is short; they've been spending a lot of money on the gTLD program or whatever. My concern is that nothing has changed; they've practically telegraphed to us that they intend to forget about everything this time next year. You know having comments and said okay, we're low on money, but we're going to keep this in mind, the moment that we're able to build up a pool or an auction fund or anything like this, this goes to the top of the queue. Nothing like that. It's basically, sorry, no money, bye.
So it isn't just having a rejection, it's basically a rejection without consideration that this is something important enough to maintain in a queue ready for when funds are available. So I see in the message that we got back essentially a telegraphed message saying not only are we rejecting you, but we're intended to force you to reboot the whole thing come a year's time and nothing will have been learned from past problems.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Any comments on this?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, I hope that isn't the case. I think if it is a risk and certainly it's a concern by some previous experience that we would put fairly probable not improbable, I'm hoping that previous experience is not carried over to current management, and therefore, it won't be an ongoing issue. I think you know my experiences to date with current management is that you don't have to use electric shock to make them learn, and that they are very open and particularly keen to try and service one of the most bizarre communities if you try and run a business and you know ICANN is just bizarre to try and run like business, you know it's who are your stakeholders, and who are your shareholders and who are you trying to respond to, EG is an absolute nightmare, and they're not doing too bad a job of it.
Let's hope they can keep it up though, but Evan, I would think this is where not only is it issues to be raised to some degree or another in what's put in, in our public comments, but I would not relinquish our usual ExCom chat with the Chief Operations officer and financial controller. I think that Friday afternoon these are the forthright and fearless discussions that we have to have. I think it surprised a crumb when I suggested that what this current system was doing was pitting us in a competitive sense, and against other parts of ICANN, I think that's something we need to explore how we can perhaps avoid that in the future, and how to not have the reboot issue, could also be I think profitably explored. Thank you.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you Cheryl, and I agree with you totally with regards to having regular meeting with Akram and certainly I hope that we have asked already for him to be present in our meeting on the Friday afternoon.
Gisella, have you worked on this as well? We've lost Gisella.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I see Tijani's hand.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I was going to ask Gisella before, but we've lost her, so at last Tijani, your hand is up.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, thank you. I do agree with Evan. And I also agree with Cheryl to have a regular meeting with Akram on this team, but the problem I think that they don't -- they understood it as if it is a request of money only. We tried to explain them the impact of the projects we are representing. We are no presenting to list the projects or everything for comfort. It is for the participation of the community and they don't understand it.
One of the core -- one of the most important values of ICANN is the participation, but they don't do anything for it. Even if we give them a project, a well-designed project, and my problem is that as Evan said, they said no, instead of that, we give you $25,000. Which is it? Six people that will support for six people. It is a nonsense. It is not -- moreover, they try to make a balance between the RALOs and this is not --not interesting for anyone, we are not looking for money only.
It's not good because we got something this year, no. It is not good, because we cannot implement our project. You understand, so I do agree with Evan. If this said, this year it will not possible, but next year you will be on top of the queue, it is -- it will be a very positive answer.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: If I may, Tijani, one of the things I see as a very affirmative thing here for what Africa is wanting is what's going to come out of the developing countries summit.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: May I answer you?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Please.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: The developing countries summit will be done with zero dollars and we will not make any effort to bring people, it was the condition of the management of ICANN.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, well, see I wasn't privy to that, so yeah, that's disappointing then, yeah.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Are you saying that you will only have the people who are already going to the developing country -- or to the Dakar meeting who will be present?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, sir. I am organizing a committee of this summit. Yes, sir. Well, you see my problem is that they don't understand the impact, I am looking for something to make people participate, it's a shame that no one from Africa, almost no one from Africa is participating, and we tried to find why, you know. Cheryl, you know very well, you followed it step by step.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh yeah, I know the whole idea, yep. Yep.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: So I am really -- I feel very, very bad when I think about it, it's as if we are speaking to the wall, we are not speaking to people.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, if you shout long enough you can get a crack in a window, and you'd be surprised what can happen, once you get a little wind in a room.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: If I may say, Tijani on this, I note you know we asked for $250,000, we got $25,000. I guess they're only haggling to start with, I would image you would be able to come back with another price, $200,000.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: The price Olivier, the price was defined by ICANN staff.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I know it was.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, okay.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: That's what totally insane, and Tijani, I totally agree with you, doing outreach with six people is you know -- it's insane it's like using a bucket to stop a forest fire, I don't know whether you've been in a forest fire, but I can tell you, drop the bucket and run. And that's the sort of thing you get here.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: And what is worse is that the project wasn't outreach, it was capacity building, it was building capacity of those people that may participate tomorrow in the ICANN process.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well, it's understood, you know I agree, I guess we all agree on this, and maybe we have to think of a strategy to continue saying again and again and again what our line is, and pushing on that.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: And there is another point that you know very well, both of you, all of you, you know very well. It is about the work shop of the IETF. It is nothing, it is nothing, nothing -- the cost is nothing. And yet they refuse it. And we did what we demonstrated them that we can do very good work for ICANN, they saw it, with no -- with zero dollar, we use our credibility for other people that funded us to go there and to organize it. And yet they say no.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Now, I tell you something Tijani, I would suggest actually that you specifically point to that, because you have to remember the current rationale and action is provided by the finance department. I'm not quite sure whether they are aware 100% of the information that you're telling us about now. However, the final say goes with the Board, and I know that several Board members are very much aware of what's -- what the benefits where, in fact so much aware that they were present at the work shop itself; isn't that correct?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes. That's right.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So if that amount is so little, you know it might worth in pointing this out specifically. I don't know how others feel about this.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think it's -- I mean to me, that's exactly why we need to build a knowledge base, because it isn't -- and if you think about you know Akram and his team, I mean they go from room to room, and they hear all this stuff coming at them, they need something they can go back and you know have a reference, and tangible evidence, blah, blah, blah. I mean it's darn hard to reproduce these things as volunteers, year in and year out. So let's try and make this a better model. It's not going to happen in this financial year, Tijani, even with a far more limited and I would like to suggest very almost castrated model, and I know what I mean when I say castrated, model for a developing country's summit, at least that's the first step.
Let's make sure that we use that as a community devoted to the open ability for more and more communities, and the billion and the billion and the billion after that are coming into the internet to be engaged in ICANN and naming and numbering, and the nomenclature on the internet. Let’s try and use that sort of thing as a (inaudible) end of the wedge to make change in a couple of financial cycles after this, which is why I would caution us not to bite the hand that feeds us but to make sure that the hand is well aware that it is holding a very capable but very cantankerous at times stallion. And it needs to be a bit of horse whispering.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl. Any other comments or…I see none. Well, Tijani, we’ll wait for the draft of the statement proposed and will continue to work on that and add to this.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, Olivier, but I want to point out that the statement would be about the draft project, the draft---
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Framework.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: It’s not framework, it’s planning so the SO, the request of the stakeholders is a part of it only. The comment would be on the whole plan and the whole budget.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That’s an imminently professional way of going forward, Tijani. Well done.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you. Right, well, I think we can move to the next part which is part number five, I believe; review and discussion of At-Large meetings in Singapore. We have had an extensive discussion in the ALAC call, anything else that you would like to add key to that?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, I do before you and Giselle start. How come we’re going to have the DSSR meeting, we’re going at half an hour of it where we can all be in the room and then half---you and I, certainly, will need to leave to go to the more important one.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: The JAS?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Can we start making sure that Gisella is---I’m assuming Gisella has got the pin on the time table…
Gisella Gruber-White: I’m here.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: She is the time table queen; can we just make sure Gisella is in the loop on all of these things? Olivier, how the hell did you let that happen?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I did not let that happen at all. Cheryl, let me just explain this; the DSSA was told about this a while ago and I believe Gisella was in the loop for that. However JAS set up the time through Carla and it is Carla that gave those suggested timings to the JAS call recently. So that’s how the JAS suddenly came to happen at the same time as the DSSA. That’s my understanding of it. Gisella?
Gisella Gruber-White: Sorry, where is the DSSA?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thursday…
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: The 23rd, from 10:30 to 90 minutes.
Gisella Gruber-White: 10:30 for 90 minutes on Thursday.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Now I have asked Bart, who is running most of the DSSA, to cut you a copy on everything.
Gisella Gruber-White: No, I haven’t seen anything. And I did ask (inaudible) to work with me on the JAS Work Group, with Glenn and myself to work on the JAS Work Group to make sure that we didn’t have any clashes with the JAS Work Group. That, I made very clear from day one. The DSSA, I can see that in, sorry yes, from 10:30 to 12:00 and I see that. Closed, I don’t know how that slipped in…
At the same time we’ve got the geographic regions and we’ve got the…I didn’t have the JAS; I know what else is on that day which I could put on our schedule that I sent through to you which Marie just pointed out to me, which may be of interest to people, was that there’s practice workshop in abusive domain name registration. I’ll check with Carla what time she’s put down for JAS.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: From 11:00.
Gisella Gruber-White: Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: In my case it means that I am going to need to be in three places at once, which is normal. Could we organize a fuck in a brothel? I mean, really, guys.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: The problem is that I don’t know what the details are but it looks as though meeting staff is just slotting everyone on the same time slots and keeping everything else empty, or how is that working?
Gisella Gruber-White: No, no, sorry. Excuse me, if I may just tell you how that works, it’s very simple. The meeting form that we are required to submit to meeting staff and that was when---I think it was 10 days ago now when we were mad rushed to get in all the meeting forms, what they literally do is they take all the meeting forms as they come in and just slot them into the schedule.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: In the time that they come in?
Gisella Gruber-White: And the time’s that they are requested to slot these meetings in for. The problem that we’ve had this time around, and I don’t recall having it as much the time before, is that we’ve got no idea what other meetings are happening at that time.
We all have to submit our forms before, let’s say, 23 UTC on the Thursday, so all the forms go in at the same time. And unless you’ve worked with people to say we really can’t have clashes, etc., the meetings are slotted in.
That’s because the people that have organized those meetings have not got on to one person to say in the ALAC, in the GNSO, because this is a cross-constituency Working Group, do we not have any clashes? That’s why I want to kind of make sure this was ALAC for me and the GNSO for Glen so that there were no clashes.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Gisella. Cheryl, your hand is up?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, it is because I’m saddened to say I have a total sense of déjà vu and it might be time for that to be revisited. We need to bring back the ghost of Christmas past again. We respectively requested, back in the Sydney meeting, in fact prior to the Sydney meeting, that the Chairs and Staff--just one Staff member, doesn’t matter who as long as everyone knew who it was--each of the pillars at ICANN were in some way, shape or form more involved in the allocation of timing slots.
It was something that GAC was particularly keen on because they were very frustrated and annoyed with, basically, having things designed almost--in their view--to make sure they couldn’t be in the room for them. It’s not that hard, as Gisella suggested, to be able to work with a little bit more coordination and having everyone put in by accident or design competing times is not a smart way.
We might need to prevail upon the individual leadership of the various AC’s and SO’s working with key staff to see if we can make this better. Unfortunately, the current meeting Staff weren’t really part of that exercise. We gained some ground and then we seemed to have lost it again. I think it’s time to revisit that because this is a damn shame. A huge amount of frustration. Gisella, you must be not a very happy lady.
Gisella Gruber-White: No, I’m going overboard.
Seth Greene: Crazy.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Tijani, you had your hand up earlier. I’m sorry I didn’t see it when Cheryl put her hand up.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: It was a mistake, I didn’t lower it. That’s all.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, thank you. Well, then we’ll leave it in your capable hands, Gisella, but obviously this---I’m not sure whether the JAS has actually got a confirmed slot at that time.
Gisella Gruber-White: I’m following up on that now. Yes, okay, the VIP lounge from 11:00 -12:30.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: It certainly seems as though the system doesn’t work when you don’t know what other groups are doing and I think that’s what basically happened. I think that Carla was totally unaware; she basically followed the procedure that she was told to follow and in fact, because the JAS group had asked for a meeting a while ago this was just in the pipeline and it just happened independently on each side.
That said, there’s also a big question with regards what’s going to happen on Monday; whether there is a launch, whether there is no launch, whether it’s at a cocktail party or whatever. I have a feeling, seeing it from the outside, that it’s just a big mess. That’s just my personal feeling. Anyway.
Gisella Gruber-White: That’s why when I followed up with Jeanie with regards to the ALAC meeting she said for the time being we’re holding it but we know what the ALAC is like and if it’s a heavy Board session that they have to prepare for they’re probably just going to tie the meeting to their meeting with the Board.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: A question: how soon are we to know these things? Because there’s one thing finding that we know what the ALAC is like but the other thing is flying people halfway around the world for them to twiddle their thumbs during our working sessions is not exactly something that’s productive. I can see this as a bad return on investment.
Gisella Gruber-White: I fully agree that I don’t know if it’s for the Chairs of the SO to actually request a meeting or if it’s session or some informal meeting with meeting staff for people in ICANN who are able to assist with this because whichever way we just have to deal with what’s handed out to us. We have to get the meeting forms in on time.
We don’t have an idea of the schedule and this just creates all these overlapping sessions that’s basically a waste of time if people have three sessions--like Cheryl--and they’re all at the same time. Another spanner in the wheels is that I’ve been looking up the consumer workshop meeting that we’ve had planned which I earlier announced from 11-12:30.
So I’m hoping in the new schedule you’ve got the version six which has what might be--I might not have updated it but it’s just information I got from Glen. She said the consumer workshop, in any case, clashes with the GNSO and GAC meeting and apparently the consumer workshop-which I got the session form from Marty so that is why you’ve got it on your schedule--is not from 11-12:30.
Now there is something that would possible be that workshop on metrics for competition, consumer trust and consumer choice which is from 12:30-14:00 Wednesday which is currently held for a time slot to have lunch with the Board. Another spanner in the wheels; all I’m trying to do and I have followed up with Diane Schroeder to try and get something out of the lady with regards to format, timing of an ALAC session with the Board. I have not heard a deaky bird back.
Secondly, I’ve asked meeting staff where this consumer workshop meeting is but now that Lynn has given me this information I’m just going to go directly to Margie and find out if this new meeting that I’ve seen from 12:30-14:00 is actually what we are referring to as the consumer workshop.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Interesting.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Shall we just leave it all in your capable hands, and…
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It’s fine to leave it in her capable hands but she’s going to need a bottle of champagne at the end of it all because it’s almost getting to more trouble than it’s worth. This is ridiculous.
Gisella Gruber-White: With regard to the--if I may just slip this in before we leave the scheduling--with regards to the actual detailed agendas of the day that you’re used to seeing up on the Wiki, my apologies, I’ve been working on this very simple format which we started using that I’ve sent through to you and that’s just to keep a very visual track of what’s actually happening with regards to other meetings. I will update the Wiki pages but Seth and I also have to now work on the actual agendas on what we’re going to be talking about on the phone and who we’re inviting.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, when you raised this point earlier you said that you weren’t suggesting who but you wondered who it should be that talks to meeting staff; when we did it last time and it really was the Chairs of the AC’s and the SO’s and we spoke to what was then the meeting management staff. Unfortunately, Nick Somaso was only---I think it was like his second meeting; he was literally just getting his training wheels off.
He certainly had other things in management that he was working for, he didn’t have his signature at the meeting as his job then so it might be worthwhile revisiting. Olivier, you’re just going to have to try and do some politicking, I think, to see where the strengths lie but for example, it was very useful for the then Chair of the SSAC when we were being told not by Nick but by somebody else who has now left the organization so I won’t name any names, that this is not---why are we thinking we should be involved as leaders in the community and meeting setting because ICANN meetings are for the Board.
At that point the crocker said, as a Board member, as the Chair of the SSAC, let me explain to you Mr.Insert-Name, exactly who these face to face meetings actually are for, and it’s not the Board. So there’s an awful lot of background here. It goes back to something that I think could certainly be a whole lot more effective and more efficient and we’ve just got to help--help is the operative word--get it easier and get it right.
Unfortunately, the people we’ve got running it--Nick and everyone--just weren’t in a position to know the problems coming at those transition points. So we need to gently bring them up to speed in why it’s important to do things in a different way.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, Cheryl. Thanks very much for sharing this viable, useful information with the history of things we are living through on a regular basis.
Gisella Gruber-White: It’s maybe been more hectic for the last two meetings because of the new ccTLD’s.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Oh, it’s been quite manic, absolutely manic, yes.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, anything else on this At-Large meeting in Singapore or which (inaudible) and hopefully some progress on that. I will raise the issue with the other Chairs of SO’s and AC’s; we do have regular calls and that’s certainly one thing which I think everyone is going to chime in on.
So the next part in the agenda is the decision of the ExCom meeting agenda in Singapore. I’m not quite sure where we’re going with that. I guess first thing, we’ve said we are going to ask for Akram to join us, definitely, and the next question is who else do we want to invite?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I think it needs to be Akram and his team. It’s no good without everyone else’s---the component parts.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Oh, I know. When I mention Akram, Akram and his team of course, I wasn’t going to just say we just want Akram and no one else.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Akram, Juan, etc.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, you’ve got to have everybody, or as many as are going to come into the room. We’ve got compliance coming at this point, we’re not doing registrars---
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: We’re not. The registrars we will see on an informal session. I think we’re supposed to have a few drinks with them or maybe a lunch. I’m not sure how that will pan out. That’s one thing, also, to follow up.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, registrars we’re going to do drinks.
Gisella Gruber-White: We’ve got them currently…Matt Serlin and I have been in touch. Made some calls, got in touch with Matt Serlin; 1:00-2:00 on Thursday.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: See, I’m not sure we need that.
Gisella Gruber-White: Okay.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: We have them as an actual session?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yeah, I noticed that when I was going through what Gisella was saying. I noticed that and thought okay.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yeah, I think that’s a mistake. That was a miscomprehension. 1:00-2:00 is an actual drink or lunch or some food or something.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It’s an informal, not a meeting room.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Informal, yeah.
Gisella Gruber-White: Okay, I’ll just tell Matt it’s an informal get together.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: On Thursday---oh, sorry. It’s on Wednesday that we’re having the lunch with the Board.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Do you want to work backwards just for the sheer hell of it as we seem to be…
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: No, no please. My mistake.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Next come Friday we’re sorted.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So, what else for the ExCom agenda? I was thinking about a post--well, discussion that we would have on some of the ongoing subjects; one, of course, is the feedback on the At-Large Board selected director. I must have made a mess of the name of that. Director selected by At-Large, basically. We obviously need a final report on this as well and the process--Cheryl, have you had some time to spend on the process or is this still on the sideline?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Haven’t done a thing on it. It’s another two years before we needed to do it again, but yes, I haven’t done a thing on it.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: It needs to move because people’s minds are going to be erased soon. In fact it already has been erased.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Actually in the case of one of the proponents in the selection committee that would be a very good thing.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, we’ll take this as an action item. Okay. The other thing was feedback on---well, I’m not sure whether we need to discuss anything to do with the At-Large improvements. Once the report will have been written and passed on to the structural improvements committee is there any worth in us discussing this or seeing where we move from there?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It could be implementation or budgetary outcomes to that but…
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So we might have to put this in the agenda as a discussion. Seth, yes, we missed you on the other call. Anything you can tell us about the At-Large improvements, please?
Seth Greene: Certainly, yes. I think as we were saying yesterday in e-mail, I think ALAC will have to approve it--or consider it, rather--with a big policy vote obviously before Singapore and I was actually just going to echo what Cheryl mentioned and that was perhaps by then if you want a discussion on it we could actually be up for discussing implementation issues; the next stages.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Seth, might I ask, have you managed to poke sharp, pointy sticks at a particular Work Team leadership set and got some results?
Seth Greene: I’m afraid that I have to say I have not actually been successful in that yet. I haven’t done much in the last few weeks though I will turn to that today. In fact, Olivier, if I may maybe I’ll Skype with you a bit on that today, and Cheryl, you as well.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, Seth. Basically we all know who we’re talking about. There is only one Work Group that’s recalcitrant, correct?
Seth Greene: Yes, absolutely.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Olivier, take a very hard line because he’s holding up all of the reporting. You look at the traffic that one of these individuals is putting into other lists, right?
Evan Leibovitch: I must be in another dimension because at this point I’m not quite sure I know who you’re talking about.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: You’ll know later.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Work Team B; it’s B, isn’t it? They have had to be pushed along, all along, and in fact much of the drafting and hard work was done by Seth.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Even the presentations were done by Seth. Thank you, Seth, but you know.
Seth Greene: You’re welcome, Cheryl.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Hard work. Seth, if you can follow up on this carbon copy me on this and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to catch Fouad on Skype. I do manage to catch him sometimes. I have a feeling he might be traveling, he might be in Geneva at the moment so that’s a bit of a tough one.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Like I said, look at how the traffic’s running in the other groups, non-ICANN groups.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: So please follow up, Seth, and then I’ll follow up on your follow up and send a second salvo. Certainly you can also show it in my direction for Work Team C and Tijani and I have actually had a chat earlier this week that we will be working on finalizing the part for Work Team C.
Seth Greene: Terrific, thanks.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Tijani, I hope you’re okay with that. We did say---Tijani? Might be muted.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, do you hear me now?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, we can hear you now, Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, very good. So I didn’t forget about it, I was worrying about it and my thought is that we did the hardest work now we have to finalize it. It needs time because what we did before was always under pressure and now we have to take time to do very good work to present the final report to the ALAC.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Can I ask, without any of my Work Team hats on, can we---and I don’t care who answers me, probably you and Olivier, to begin with, and Evan. Well, Evan’s got the easy one of course, lucky man, but the Seth can probably follow up. Can we, as ALAC, actually reasonably expect a completed final report with recommendations that say Work Team C recommends that, Work Team A recommends that ALAC does…in the ALAC’s hands but a date around, shall we say, the 15th-17th of June; yes or no?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: I would say it would be presented in Singapore meeting.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Could it be done live, face to face, do you think?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yeah.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Evan, you’ve got the easy one.
Evan Leibovitch: Well, yeah. It’s mostly done. It’s gone to the Board already; it’s sort of out of our hands.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Who’s a lucky boy then? Seth, do you see the other teams being able to say the same things to my question?
Seth Greene: Yeah. I actually think so, Cheryl, yes. Absolutely.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, alright. So surprise me. Make it the 15th. Give it to me before my 15th because that’s when I fly out, alright, and I can read something on the plane.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, that gives us two weeks. I think that for Work Team C, yes; we can do it where it’s pretty close to it. I’m concerned about Work Team B but certainly acting right away will help. If they do fail in moving forward then I guess it’s going to have to be others that are going to pick up and certainly be very annoyed with those people that have not managed to do their bid, basically.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Olivier, if I may, pick up the phone or directly contact Annalisa. I believe she probably thinks that when Fouad says I’ll take care of that, he has. She’s not good at the follow up or the details. If you present her with the guess what, this is about to look really, really dirty and you’re going to be in the middle of it, she might be motivated.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay. My list; any other points or requests now because we’ve reached that point at the meeting. Any other business?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Olivier, with the performance bits of all of us, you and I, Evan, Tijani---are perfect, of course. That can’t be said for everyone. There are metrics that we did establish. There are measurements that we used to have. There are reportable that we could go back to. At what point in time do you want the executive committee to consider revisiting these thorny, thorny, thorny issues?
We have people who are rarely voting, not turning up to enough of their meetings; the people who put them in as reps, deserve to have a running tally on how their reps are performing. To my knowledge the only region that does a 360 degree review--and I mean literally 360 degree review-of their reps is APRALO; happened in Delhi with Fatima and I, and it happened-I forget what, some country somewhere--with me and the other person didn’t turn up.
That is literally---you sit in the middle of the square and they grill you and they ask you to justify your existence to them. That works from an Asia-Pacific perspective because you’ve all seen the theater sports and the bizarre and peculiar game shows that go on in Asia so that’s okay.
It’s not something that’s going to be suitable in all cultures. So the sooner we’re able to find those benchmarks and the rest of those things it’s going to help the NomCom appointees, some of whom perform superbly and some of whom I don’t think perform at all. It should, I think, be something that, you know, our implementation, our accountability as a part of the ICANN organization.
We should be able to give some measurable out. Evan, I’m particularly keen to hear your feedback because North America has huge issues with these red, green and blue lines or whatever they were and how we as individuals are tracking on attending meetings, on contributing to policy and on doing votes. Should we revisit or should we not?
Evan Leibovitch: I don’t know. If you’re asking me as an individual I think my answer is different from somebody trying to speak on behalf of the region. I think in the region things have got---they’ve got kind of tired of things. I personally have a concern about a couple of specific individual performances but as you well know, life on the NORALO mailing list is certainly rarely calm. Getting general discussion is not a problem; specific performance sometimes is hard to come by. There’s certainly not the war path beyond the typewriter of Danny Unger.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I was going to say I have read some complaints by some NORALO members about the dreadful performance that was displayed by some people. They didn’t name names but certainly some NORALO members were annoyed and I can understand that. Others were annoyed for other things as well. I’m all for these metrics; I’m all for them. Specifically because it appears to be the only thing that gets people to actually understand how poor their own performance is.
Often people think that they’ve got a stellar performance and then it’s only when they actually see it on paper they’ll find out how bad it is. I was very pleased with today’s ALAC call. The people that I reprimanded in personal e-mails last time all turned up. Whether it’s something that will continue---the trend continue, I hope that it will. At the same time some people take reprimand better than others and some people seem to be taking it badly and maybe personally in a certain way and so they should.
It’s them that has done the wrong by neither turning up nor sending an apology which I think is particularly bad for other participants because it wastes their time. So, metrics. I’m all for it. You know how you proceed going forward. Do we decide to put them---
Seth Greene: We could basically revive the work that Nick had been very diligently doing.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Gisella, when she came on board that was part of her job description. She would know how much of a commitment that type of recording is. I would be not particularly to put additional strain on our under-resourced staff right now but yeah, those metrics were workable as far as I could tell.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Did you say Gisella was in charge of that?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: How much work was involved Gisella?
Gisella Gruber-White: I’m here, sorry.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: We know you’re here; you’ve got a green for this meeting.
Gisella Gruber-White: I’m trying to work between mute and unmute in order to save the line.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: How much work was involved, Gisella, in keeping track of things?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Metrics.
Gisella Gruber-White: A lot is doable once I get my life back.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Not you, dear, just in general.
Gisella Gruber-White: In general it’s…it’s work. It’s like all the GNSO attendance for every single Working Group. It’s a lot of work.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Could I suggest that we don’t start right now but we start as soon as we come back to sort of more bearable staff levels?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Olivier, I’m wondering about putting it on your agenda for the [DECA] meeting where you’ve got some of us leaving--hopefully not all of us are dead wood--I’d like to think I wasn’t dead wood but if I’m out someone else will be replacing me. You’ve got fresh people to start on metrics and you might find that at that point in time if staff realize what’s going to be required they can work out what administrations is going to be needed.
Gisella Gruber-White: Olivier, shall I put it down for the DECA meeting?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Please, yes.
Gisella Gruber-White: Work on the ALAC metrics bearing in mind that--if I missed the first half I was trying to get my phone to stop ringing--I know that this has also been discussed within the ALS’s. Sorry, the RALO’s.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Within the RALO’s it has been discussed. If I could ask, also, that you provide me with a list of the people who did not turn up for the ALAC call today and did not send an apology and I will also send them a private e-mail. If there are any, and I hope there weren’t but if there were.
Gisella Gruber-White: I will get those to you. I’m keen to look at the format though, with you, whenever it is prior to us actually launching in DECA that’s what we’re going to be doing again because we need to make sure that this is something that is easily used. It was extremely complicated working on.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: When I walked into an office at one point and saw you doing it I thought oh, good lord. Wow, that’s ridiculous.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Just one thing that I wanted to add with regard to the last ALAC meeting, not this one but the one previously where we had very poor showing.Ssome of those people who did not turn up and did not send an apology did apologize afterwards and explain to me that--one of them I think had a medical emergency and one of them had--I would tend to believe them so there are times also when people do not turn up on occasion where it’s just bad luck, basically. Something happening at the last moment; that happens. If it does become a trend, if we do record this then we can definitely record trends.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Olivier, even the system which as Gisella explained (interference) that seemed far more work than it was worth. You didn’t go from green to orangey/yellow at missing two meetings. There are reasonable tolerances in there. You have to be a pretty bloody piss-poor performer to get down in the oranges and yellows and by the time you hit the reds, well…we did have some but they were two NomCom appointees.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, any other other business than that?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: When are we going to encourage the ALS audit because that’s something we need to work with the regional leads on very, very closely because unless there’s continuity and agreement between the regional leadership as to how they are going to do, manage, measure and everything else, it’s going to turn into a dog’s breakfast.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Maybe that’s another thing to put on the action items then. Start working on the ALS audit. In EURALO I will raise this as an agenda item in our general assembly which is due to take place this Sunday in Belgrade and there is--I mean, it’s an agenda item that’s already ready so we’re definitely going to discuss this and ALS’s--not performance but ALS’s appearing in this sort of thing is a particularly important thing to discuss.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: At the moment the only way you can stop being an ALS is if you resign.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: If ALS doesn’t exist anymore how does it resign?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: That’s actually a loophole.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Just a question; is it up to each RALO to deal with this or are there standards that the ALAC---
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It’s an ALAC issue. Honestly, Olivier, I have been through these every which way.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: May I ask you, Cheryl, as one who knows all of this…
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: We really need to do some work on---
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: May I ask you, Cheryl, as one who knows about this to put this as one of your agenda items since you’re both aware of the issue very well plus you’re aware of the history plus you’re aware of the charter, etc. etc.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: It has to be after Singapore and it does fit in terms of a post-ALAC improvement implementation exercise.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, perfect.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I can see this as being really seriously discussed with implementation outcomes happening at the DECA meeting which means we’ve got some real work to do between Singapore and DECA.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Excellent. Well, I think we’ve been through all the other items and if there isn’t any further comment or any further business then with 10 minutes to spare until the hour--which makes us very late--we will close this meeting. Thank you very much for attending. Thanks very much for this and for those of you continuing with the PEDNR meeting shortly then good luck.
[End of Transcript]