NARALO 2011.01.17 Transcript
- gisella.gruber-white
- matt.ashtiani
Beau Brendler: Okay let's start. Can we do the roll call please, starting now I am Beau Brendler; I am hosting the meeting today and will see the hand raises and the Adobe Conference Connect. But for the meeting I'm going to be using actually the Community Page because the items are linked on there. Who else do we have on this Martin Luther King Holiday in the United States?
Mark Rittenberg: Mark Rittenberg.
Beau Brendler: Great.
Annalisa: Annalisa.
Gareth Sherman: Gareth Sherman.
Alan Skias: Alan Skias.
Alan Greenberg: Do you also want the Canadians that aren’t for celebrating Martin Luther King.
Beau Brendler: You have Martin Luther King Day up there?
Alan Greenberg: No.
Chris Grunderman: Chris Grunderman.
Eric Brunner Williams: Eric Brunner Williams.
Alan Greenberg: And Alan Greenberg.
Beau Brendler: A few of you, namely Mark and Eric, I don’t see you in the Adobe Chat room which is fine. It's just that that’s just what is good to use in terms of trying to raise a hand or make a comment, so I leave that as it may be. Okay so let's start out in terms of the summary minutes I think briefly if we go through here is a couple of things that I want to circle back to that will both be in here and in action items.
Drafting a reply to the report from the Department of Commerce according to the summary minutes page here we need to have a discussion about the implications so that we can move forward. And update on that, I did send a fairly lengthy message that had links to the various communications from the Department of Commerce over the last couple of years including the most recent one in an attempt to help us come to some consensus on where we should be in terms of agreement to whether to write a letter or not. I will get more back to that when we go through action items.
The next item on the summary minutes we need to do a lot of work in preparation for the San Francisco meeting in the NARALO showcase. I believe the latest effort on that is that Gisella has sent out a request for people to fill in a Doodle on that list as to when they can meet, I believe the week of the - and that includes the day of the 24th or 25th of January. So please sign up for that. Annalisa will send a list of affordable hotels in the meeting venue.
A call for volunteers for the NARALO showcase, that has gone out but I think there is obviously there is more discussion that needs to happen there as to, you know, speakers and other items which will probably be taken up by the volunteer group. Clarifications for rules and procedures and operating principles, and then well that’s really in Alan’s court and we will check in with him shortly to see where that is.
So let's move from the summary minutes page to the action items page unless has any specific observations on those items. Going once, twice, okay so moving to the NARLO action items page on the community site, we have a reference again to Annalisa’s affordable hotels list, a call for volunteers to the NARALO showcase and then a reference to Alan and his work with the rules and procedure.
And then I also put the Department of Commerce letter to be or not to be from NARALO on there, so. Since we’re on the action items page can we just check on these various items? Annalisa forgive me if you have sent the list, I haven’t seen it yet.
Annalisa: Yes Beau I have not sent the list and I apologize for that I was really tied up with working on this gala with ICANN and that’s now been resolved as far as my participation. So I'm going to have time now to work on that so I'll go ahead and do that.
Beau Brendler: No apologies necessary, thank you.
Annalisa: Okay, thanks. I also have a question though about the sign up for the Doodle, can you just put it - can somebody drop a link in there to - I'll sign up for that because I'm going to help out with the NARALO meeting there.
Beau Brendler: Yeah we can do that.
Darlene: Annalisa, send a message to the list and then you will be dropped in there. But you need to send a message to the list.
Annalisa: Okay so I will hopefully find that list. But you know what, I don’t think I can send a message to the list.
Darlene: Yes you can because the NARALO.
Annalisa: [Inaudible00:04:50].
Darlene: The NARALO list that you send messages to all the time, just send it to staff.
Annalisa: Okay.
Beau Brendler: [Inaudible00:04:59] if I get my hands free later in the call I will post the link to the Doodle that Gisella sent around.
Annalisa: I think some of these lists reject certain emails but I could be wrong.
Beau Brendler: Okay the volunteer for the NARALO showcase call has gone out. And you know what we’re talking about now. Alan in terms of the suggested modifications to rules, procedures and operating principles?
Alan Greenberg: Yep.
Beau Brendler: That’s out, is it not?
Alan Greenberg: No it is not, I did some work on it prior to the Cartagena meeting. The operating principle - the rules of procedure, I guess are in a real mess and it's going to take more work that I originally thought and it doesn’t seem to be a really high priority item so I haven’t done much work on it in the last month.
Beau Brendler: Okay.
Alan Greenberg: It will get done over the next month or two though.
Beau Brendler: Yeah, not to worry and Eric obviously has a great deal of experience and insight in matters related to ICANN. So if you want to hear comments that he has since he is now an affiliated user representative that would be great. Then the other item, review the issues related to the Department of Commerce letter. So when - do we have a hand up there?
When the explanation went out, I didn’t see a heck of a lot of traffic on the list about it. Although there was a response from John Levine which I thought was relatively thoughtful but I don’t know if that represents consensus. I see Alan with a hand up, go ahead.
Alan Greenberg: Yeah I meant to send out a message and I honestly don’t remember if I did or not, maybe I didn’t. I really think the time for that has passed. It's old news at this point. The ICANN Board has replied. Whether it's a valid reply or not, I haven’t seen anything else out of the Department of Commerce and it was timely when we talked about it in Cartagena. I think it's old news at this point and I really don’t think it's worth putting a lot of effort into it. That’s my take anyway.
Beau Brendler: While we are on that topic do we have any consensus or agreement with that point of view [inaudible00:07:22]. Shall we assume that we don’t want to spend any more time on this and not send a letter?
Alan Greenberg: No one is either agreeing or disagreeing, so.
Male: I'm not sure how to read that.
Male: No one’s agreeing.
Darlene: I would agree that we've passed our time on that.
Beau Brendler: Eric has raised his hand, Eric.
Eric Brunner Williams: That means that I've actually found out how to raise my hand using the new interface. Yeah I think that moment’s passed. I think the more interesting or the more timely issue is anticipating the intercessional in Geneva, thank you.
Beau Brendler: Anyone else before we, in essence use that to create a motion? Okay motion to not follow through at this point on the DOC letter from NARALO because it's old news, going once.
Male: So moved.
Beau Brendler: So moved? Okay.
Gareth: Second this is Gareth.
Beau Brendler: Gareth seconds that, alright, great. Okay hang on one second here while my page reloads. Okay so now let's move to Item 3 on the agenda, since we've gone through summary minutes and action items to open public consultations. If everybody can hit the link there or at least get to that page on the ICANN site, I'm not sure trying to recall how Evan effectively moved through this I don’t remember.
So I guess the question to ask is looking in that first column there where is says open for comment do we see anything within that column that we have not commented on or need to include and make a comment on?
Evan Leibovitch: It's basically the way I did it. There is nothing magical to this. ICANN tosses a bunch of things over the wall saying does anybody want to put a comment in on it? And so half the trick is figuring out which ones are even worth our time.
Beau Brendler: Thank you Evan. I don’t know if anybody’s had the chance to review it at length, is there anyone out there who has looked at this and who feels that there is a burning need for NARALO to weigh in on any of these topics? Do we have any hands up here? Alan, no actually Alan’s goose does not have its hand up.
Alan Greenberg: No that was from before.
Beau Brendler: Okay so let's actually move on from that then. And if anybody sees in their daily course of business any open public consultations that we believe that we need NARALO to offer an opinion on obviously let's email each other or email the list and talk about it, does that sound good?
Male: Yep.
Beau Brendler: Alright moving to 3A on the agenda, At-Large Policy Advice Development Schedule. If you click on that link, if everybody’s able to click on that link you come to a [inaudible00:10:39] page here that has seven ICANN policy issues under consideration by At-Large. And most of them are pretty much in the process of being done. Does anyone have any comments on anything here? I have something I would like to say at some point, probably later in the meeting about the registrar accreditation evaluation process but I will hold that until further business. Do we have any hands us? No-
Male: Yep.
Beau Brendler: Yes we have a hand up from whoever has a hand up, please go ahead and speak. Oh it's Eric Brunner Williams, Eric go ahead.
Eric Brunner Williams: Yeah I'm not sure if I'm following the way you're working through the list. Are you currently on open public consultations, 3A, B or C?
Beau Brendler: I'm on the web page that’s linked from the agenda that was sent around in email. Unfortunately it's not linked from the agenda that’s in the Adobe Connect. But the URL is spreadsheets.google.com and then there is sort of a complicated ASP address after that. It’s an ICANN page that has currently policy issues under consideration by At-Large. And there is a list of seven.
Darlene: But yes, that is Item 3A in the agenda, I believe Eric.
Eric Brunner Williams: Thank you. Is it correct to say to that there are actually only two of these items that are still open for comment?
Beau Brendler: I believe that to be correct, yes.
Male: Well there is still an opportunity to comment on the ATRT final.
Male: That’s it, it's only about ATR.
Male: I have a comment to make on our own internal processor, ALAC internal process on the comments that ALAC submitted to the 2011-2014 Strategic Plan.
Beau Brendler: Okay yeah why don’t you go ahead and make a comment on that Eric. I know that Seth went - I you're detailed note that you sent went through but yeah go ahead.
Eric Brunner Williams: Well one of the things that ICANN policy has been uninformed by historically is operational data about actual registries and recursive resolvers. Basically we don’t know very much at all about the state of tests. Yet we attempt to make policy about how to manage the recourses that constitute the [inaudible00:13:45] identifiers at the very least of the net. I put in that we should work on removing the legal barriers to the access to data.
Most of this data of course is located in registry operations which were North America. Most of it also is located at registrars in North America. And most of them are cursive resolvers or at least a significant fraction of them are in North America as well, at the ISPs. So the real locus of data that we could have access to or were to work on lowering the legal barriers to data actually resides in the North American civil law legal regime.
Personally this observation, this recommendation, when it went to ALAC became the rationale not for lowering the legal barriers data but replicating them. So instead of ALAC undertaking as a strategic goal or ALAC encouraging ICANN as a strategic goal to lower the legal barriers to operational data, the observation that most the data is in North America became the basis for making a recommendation that there be more geographical diversity, which basically replicates the problem of having ownership [inaudible00:15:08] the data to simply more places rather than getting rid of the barriers in the first place. Thank you.
Beau Brendler: Eric you want to - do we have anybody else who wants to make a comment.
Male: Yeah I do.
Beau Brendler: Okay go ahead.
Male: Yeah Eric I just want to ask a question. You said when it went to ALAC; ALAC changed it to a request for more geographic diversity. I don’t recall that at all. Can you elaborate a little bit?
Eric Brunner Williams: Well I sent follow-up mail to Oliver saying that I think that something was lost in the translation from my original to what was actually submitted and his response was that it was intentional. That there - the interest in diversity was greater than or was sufficient to motivate this change.
Male: Okay. I will let Olivier speak for himself then.
Beau Brendler: Yeah Olivier is actually on the call and is planning to discuss some issues that is a big chunk of the agenda. Or perhaps he wants to do it now. Yeah Olivier go ahead please.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thanks very much. I actually emailed Eric about this and the gist of the explanation is that what we did at ALAC was to take the input from all the regions and not only add from some of the regions and put them straight into the plan but also collated with the other regions as well. And so some of the points which might have been made by one region might have not completely but wholly worked with the comments of another region and therefore the way things were worded might not have been exactly what one region was saying.
So that’s the explanation that I gave to Eric. And that other regions have asked for a lot more geographic diversity and this certainly seemed to be echoed somehow with Eric’s comments. Eric wrote afterwards and said he actually didn’t quite mean that, he meant that the information - he just meant the information that is out there should be available outside the North American region and that’s something which I think is encompassed on the more geographical diversity clause in there. Does that answer your question?
Beau Brendler: Sounds like it possibly does. Any additional discussion on this?
Eric Brunner Williams: Actually I didn’t have a question, I made a statement.
Beau Brendler: Oh okay. well I tell you what, if it is a concern, Eric if you wouldn’t mind, since this format can be rather difficult to keep on top of, if you want to just draft a couple of paragraphs and send it to the list, we can review your concerns and perhaps make a more formal statement if others share the concern. Does that sound good?
Eric Brunner Williams: Thank you, I'll do that.
Beau Brendler: Okay. so let's continue on with the agenda here because we have a lot to do. Let's move to 3B, Interim Report of Geographic Regions Review Working Group. The representative for that is whom? I actually didn’t put it on the agenda. Do we need to hear from whoever is working on the Interim Report of Geographic Regions Review?
Okay we will attempt to get whoever is responsible for that to inform us via the list. Okay 3C Recently Submitted ALAC Statements. Draft 2011-2014 strategic plan we've discussed briefly, maybe we can ask Olivier in the course of his time in the meeting to just briefly get us up to speed on that. Draft final report on policy aspects regarding introduction to single character IDNTLDs. I think that’s - does anybody have a comment or anything on that?
It's not necessarily NARALOs [inaudible00:19:43]. Okay ALAC statement on draft final guidebook. Evan do you have any reflection there on that item for us?
Evan Leibovitch: Only to state that it's still ongoing. Essentially what happened was ICANN put out an applicant guidebook. After significant thrashing about and trying to get common ground with some of the other constituencies, we effectively put out a statement that I think many of you have seen that essentially said that one a couple of grounds the guidebook was unacceptable. As much as we wanted to see new PLDs come out there are some substantial barriers. We've addressed a number of these.
There have been two cross community working groups that have been created and working together with the GNSO and in some cases the GAC on addressing some of the bigger sticky issues of objectionable obscene strings as well as support for applicants from poor economies. That work - those committees have partially completed their work. The one on objectionable strings has gotten to a certain point and said well here are the things we've reached consensus on and there's a lot that they haven’t.
The one on applicant support basically put out a milestone report. The ALAC has basically said keep going we like what you're doing. GNSO has also said, well keep going but wants to put significant obstacles in the path of going forward. So there's going to be some politics yet to be fought in that group. But on the applicant guidebook itself, right now the big news is happening that the GAC has requested a meeting with the Board. it looks like that is going to happen the end of February in Brussels at which the GAC and the Board are going to sit down and the GAC is going to go through it's shopping list of problems that it has.
We have been trying to make sure that at least that there is [inaudible00:22:08] for At-Large as observers in this process. There is a movement to try and make sure that the meeting is open. The status of this is still in flux.
Beau Brendler: Okay, thank you Evan. Does anyone have any comment on that or questions? Okay under agenda item 3B let's move on to Alan’s statement on proposed bylaw amendments on Board member term transitions.
Eric Brunner Williams: I have a question.
Beau Brendler: Oh okay Eric Brunner Williams go ahead.
Eric Brunner Williams: Oh thank you. Evan you said in Brussels? It was my impression that the intercessional is scheduled for Geneva.
Evan Leibovitch: Nope, they’ve moved it. Apparently there was some other thing going on at the same time in Geneva and they had to change the venue.
Eric Brunner Williams: Okay but the dates are unchanged?
Evan Leibovitch: Right now there are no dates in stone. It is looking like the soonest they can have it is February 28th. But as of this moment, to my knowledge they have not totally agreed on anything. They have tentative location, at lease for a city. They have a tentative time. But right now the buzzword is tentative, nothing is nailed down.
Eric Brunner Williams: Thank you.
Beau Brendler: Olivier you have your hand up.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you. just to add to what Evan just said we have been in discussion with the GAC and with the Board and trying to find out if it was going to be better to have it earlier than that because there have been some comments out there saying that if it's as late as the 28th of February and the 1st of March there will not be enough time for any action taking place after the meeting in case there are any major changes, especially if there needs to be some type of commenting period of passing of these changes into the community.
So there have been some calls for it to be done 10 to 15 days earlier. But the latest that we received from today was that, you know, the date is set at the 28th because there is not enough time for the staff to prepare paperwork until then. That’s the earliest they can do it so far. That said, it hasn’t been published yet. So until you find it published by a joint statement take this with the fact that it might change, thank you.
Beau Brendler: Okay thank you Olivier. Back to our agenda, the ALAC statement on proposed bylaws, amendments and Board member term transitions. This is already been transmitted to the [inaudible00:24:54] Improvement Committee for the governance or whatever the oversights committee is. Alan the bottom line on that - Alan Greenberg the bottom line on that is the term limits basically. Do you have just a brief update on that for those of us who don’t know about it?
Alan Greenberg: I'm not quite sure why I would have an update on it. Maybe I'm confused.
Beau Brendler: No just that I know that NARALO was involved in some discussion about term limits or term transitions for Board members. If you do not have the latest on that?
Alan Greenberg: I know I had some comments on it early but I think we decided - ALAC decided not to make a comment on that item.
Beau Brendler: Okay, great let's move to the next one then, Comment on Uniform Rapid Suspension. I am not - I was not a part of this but Alan was. Do you have a brief update on that Alan?
Alan Greenberg: Well I made a personal comment on it and the ALAC endorsed it. The comment was twofold. In the Board’s meeting in somewhere or other, it took the universal rapid suspension process which had been - if you remember that was created by the special trademarks issue of the GNSO working group a long time ago. And it went out to comment and was accepted and it went into the applicant guidebook a few versions ago. The Board unilaterally, without any notice or anything else, change one particular tiny part in it and I objected on two grounds.
Number one I believed it was an incorrect - the change they made should not have been made for specific reasons related to the universal rapid suspension process. And the second one is the Board has always said we do not want to make policy. And here they dived in to a policy that had been created by the bottom up consensus process and changed one tiny unilateral thing, one tiny item presumably in response to complaints to the trademark lobby.
And I thought that was wrong in fact and wrong in principle. And I made a comment which the ALAC ended up supporting. I don’t think there is anything more to it than that.
Beau Brendler: Okay any additions, comments or questions about that particular element? Okay let's move on the next section of the agenda which is headed Proposed Agenda Items, Item 4, Review of Cartagena meeting. I don’t think we need to necessarily take 10 minutes on this other than I will mention to you that I wound up going back to Cartagena. I left the meeting and went the Amazon for a week and then went back to Cartagena and the whole town was flooded.
The ocean had completely burst the banks and the city was underwater which was something to see. But anyway we have - we are delighted to have new ALAC officers including, present with us on the call today, Dr. Olivier Crepin-Leblond. I was not aware that Olivier had such an esteemed title there. But we are delighted to have him on the call. Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Vice Chair, Evan Leibovitch, our local boy makes good there yet again, as Vice Chair.
Carlton Samuels was elected to Reporter; Tijani became representative from the African region. You can all read this but just it would be worthwhile to go through the names so that we can all catch up. This is on the ICANN sites under announcements. ALAC representative Tijani from AFRALO, Edmund Chung from APRALO, Sandra Hoffter from EURALO, Sergio from LACRALO, Jean-Jacques Supernat late addition Noncom selectee to the ALAC from the European Region, Evan in NARALO and Mark Rittenberg who we are delighted to have on the call here.
I'm not going to go through all the rest of the officers there, you can go ahead and catch up on that list yourself. But those of you who were not in Cartagena, there was a fair amount of personnel transition which I think is healthy. Update on At-Large policy discussions. Again the link to the Chair’s report from Cartagena, I think would do a better summary job than me just simply reading it to you. You can read through the Chair’s report there.
The highlights basically, 17 formal and 2 cross constituency meetings in Cartagena. At-Large was represented by 28 members from all five regions and you can go ahead and check out the rest of the material there on that page as you so choose. Then update on ICANN developments and important Board decisions, I may defer this to perhaps Olivier or Alan or someone a bit later in the call who is closer to that as I was not in town in Cartagena for Board day on Friday. Does anybody have any questions or issues or concerns or observations that they want to make post Cartagena other than at the gala the food ran out?
Evan Leibovitch: Well the big news that the media reported was the approval of .XXX finally after going through all the wrangling, there still is a little bit of negotiation to go on, but it's basically on small details. While the big decision to actually approve the domain happened despite a lot of last minute pleas from the usual suspects not to let it happen.
The other thing, obviously was the vote of what did not happen which was they did not throw the gTLD application process open. There were a lot of people hoping that despite some communities including our own having some significant problems with it that the Board would still go ahead and start accepting applications for new gTLDs that did not happen. Essentially what the Board did say was that they're happy that most of the details to do with the process have been nailed down. And now they are going to try and sort out the rest of it.
The handful of outstanding issues need to be ironed out before they can throw it open and the Board committed itself to try get to the bottom of it. Olivier did you want to expand on that at all, or?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: No, thank you Evan you did pretty well in describing it, so.
Beau Brendler: We have a hands up from Eric and from Alan. I saw Eric’s first, go ahead Eric please.
Eric Brunner Williams: Oh thank you. I thought more significant even than the nonvote or the approval of XXX was the invocation of the bylaws by the GAC or the nonadoption of GAC advice by the Board which is the root cause for the intercessional apparently at the end of February. Thank you.
Beau Brendler: Alan Greenberg.
Alan Greenberg: Yeah I had two items. One of them was the one that Eric just mentioned. There has been talk should the ALAC have the same rights of demanding answers from the Board and be able to advise the Board and the Board has to take it seriously as the GAC does. And a lot of that focuses around the fact that if you look at the bylaws there are like six different sections in the bylaws, six different paragraphs that talk about GAC advice in its various forms and what to do about it. There are no equivalent ones for the ALAC.
So I don’t think we’re going to be at par any time soon now. But the important thing is that most of those bylaw sections have been ignored by the Board and the GAC has called them on it and said you have to take this seriously. So that I think is one of the first important items that will change substantially how ICANN does business and that’s important. The second one is that the Board had two meetings, one public and one more private on the morality and public order issue. Almost unheard of in recent past for the Board to actually interact with people and try to make sure they understood what was being said instead of simply reading a document that was tossed over the wall.
And the Board came back and then said to the group please elaborate in writing so that we don’t misunderstand what you are saying. The group did meet both via electronic mail and teleconference in the period after Cartagena and issued a statement to the Board which was generally unanimously adopted by the people who were participating in the group.
Which again, I thought was a relatively unheard of thing that we took the agreement that we had in the map group prior to Cartagena and worked on it again and came out with a bunch of people who had very different opinions ending being satisfied that the wording reasonably represented them. Not everyone is happy of course. But the fact that we got together, issued a statement, the Board had asked for it and presumably the Board will act on it, I think is a [inaudible00:35:29] change in how the Board is dealing with things. So I think both of those are relatively important.
Beau Brendler: Yes I agree. We have a number of hands up here in the queue and I want to get through them all and still have enough time to wrap up on time. So I'm going to go to Eduardo, followed by Evan and then Eric and Annalisa did you still want to comment or not?
Annalisa: Oh thank you Beau, I changed my mind.
Beau Brendler: Oh okay, go ahead Eduardo.
Eduardo Diaz: Yes I want just to be clear, I think the thing about the know in Cartagena the Board not going and opening up the gTLDs, doesn’t that have to do with the Department of Commerce letter which says don’t do it? And the other things is this is about morality. Also in the first letter of the Department of Commerce it says, you know that ICANN should not get involved with that issue. To get involved in getting things [inaudible00:36:23] but not getting [inaudible00:36:29]. Can anyone comment on that because I'm kind of confused?
Beau Brendler: I can't perhaps Evan can. He has - I don’t know - Evan?
Evan Leibovitch: Okay Eduardo, ICANN is in a bit of a bind because its own organization, the GNSO that makes its policy has effectively said that ICANN has to have a mechanism for dealing with objectionable strings. So all the discussion that we have had since, is how to implement this and what criteria to use and how somebody raises and objections and all that.
Everything we've been doing since has been figuring out a way to implement that particular policy requirement. Unless the GNSO rescinds what is widely known as Recommendation 6, ICANN and its community still has to figure out a way to implement it. if the DOC is saying don’t do it and ICANNs own community through the GNSO said you have to do it, that’s essentially something the ICANN Board is going to have to deal with and I'm not totally sure how it's going to deal with that except for nothing that the government advisory committee and ALAC are both participating in the ongoing discussion about this at least from the people I've spoken to on the GAC.
They certainly want to see some mechanism for being able to have objections to strings based on international standards of discussing so to speak of which there are very few. So the bar would be very high. And going back to what was said earlier about the influence of ALAC in the Board, I would simply call attention to in the ALAC Improvements Working Team A has actually drafted ICANN bylaw changes to start to expand the role of ALAC as it's described within the bylaws.
So just be aware that there is some work going on at the bylaw level to acknowledge a growing role of that part in ALAC. They do not go as far as putting in all the provisions for responses exists for the GAC. But it is a start as Alan said it is a long process. But it is actually happening to the point where staff and the structural improvements committee are going to start to recommend bylaw changes into the ICANN bylaws to further acknowledge the role of At-Large.
And I would also note to some of the meetings that went on that Alan was talking about where we had Board people saying “We don’t want things filtered to us through Staff. We need to find out directly what the community wants to do.” This is all really good news. There is going to be some continued action within the next month.
There is a small working team that is being collected to actually suggest some alternate wording to the applicant guidebook on areas where the Rec 6 group did not reach consensus and to come up with areas where we can put forward an end-user centric approach to objectionable strings and things like that. I mean the consensus that Alan talks about was really good, but there is still an awful lot of things that we didn’t come to agreement on and in those areas - the what I'm calling end-user centric component of the ICANN community are going to come together and put something forward.
Beau Brendler: Okay there are additional hands up here on this topic but I am going to move on otherwise we are going to run out of time before we get to other important items. Next on the list is our esteemed new ALAC Chair Dr. Crepin-Leblond on the NARALO Input to Work Team C SWOT analysis. We have 10 minutes allocated for Olivier. But if he can do it in seven that would be lovely, Olivier over to you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thanks very much Beau and I'll try and do it in five but I might then overrun an additional two minutes. Work Team C has been dealing with the At-Large improvements specifically looking Recommendation 5 and 6 of the At-Large Improvement Recommendations that were published quite a while ago now. And Recommendation 5 and 6 are as you might see on the page which has been allocated for NARALO to write its input. Recommendation 5 is ALAC should develop strategic and operational plans as part of ICANNs planning process.
And Recommendation 6 is At-Large should develop accurate cost models. so putting Recommendation 6 aside, what we’re working on at the moment specifically is Recommendation 5 and in order to be able to develop strategic and operational plans as part of ICANNs planning process one of the exercises that we did - that’s a lot of ringing - one of the exercises that we did was to develop some SWOT plans.
SWOT means Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, which is comes into strategic analysis of At-Large. And we had a look at it ourselves and the team and so we looked and made three of them, one relating specifically to strategic planning within At-Large, one relating specifically operational planning and one to budgetary planning. So what were our strengths in that, what were our weaknesses, what were our opportunities and what were the threats on this?
And so what we came up with were a number of tables I guess, as you might see if you scroll down the page with the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats on the strategic planning. And I'm not going to go through all of that because that will probably take us 10 minutes just for that. And what we’re looking for now is for RALO input. We’re looking for your region to look at this say “Did anything get missed in there? Can we add to this? Perhaps even looking at regional issues, what are our strengths regionally?
Basically we want to complete this with the RALO input and we really hope that you guys are able to contribute to this. And that there are a number of things in there for example, when we reviewed this with Scott, we saw that in SWOT and ALAC At-Large budgetary planning we offered -
Beau Brendler: Can someone mute their line please? There is a lot of interference there, it's *6 to mute. Thank you, sorry Olivier please continue.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yeah, thanks Beau. Yes the SWOT and ALAC At-Large budgetary planning related to Recommendation 6, we are looking at the opportunities. There is only one opportunity listed there perhaps you can think of others. But in any case, bring your contributions in there and once this happens, once you’ve filled it in, then the team at Work Team C will be collecting this with the other regional input and adding it to there.
Then it will use the result of the SWOT in order to fill the boxes and start working on the different tasks which are listed in the simplified At-Large Improvement Implementation Outline which they are working on at the moment and then we will develop processes to be able to improve what we have at the moment and be more in line with the new strategic process which is currently in place - which has just been put in place within ICANN as a whole. Are there any questions? And I see Evan has got his hand up.
Beau Brendler: Yep Evan is it -
Evan Leibovitch: Oh sorry, just didn’t take it down from last time, go ahead.
Beau Brendler: Well we have Gareth Sherman is the NARALO’s representative in Work Team C and we’re going to hear a little bit from Gareth later. But I'm sure he will help serve as a conduit for whatever regional input or for the regional input that we have. So we will -
Gareth: Yes but I don’t have too much to add to what Olivier has already said, this is Gareth. But certainly I am quite willing to be the conduit for the NARALO input to that analysis, Beau.
Beau Brendler: Terrific, that’s fantastic.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Now if I may just add Beau there is a deadline as in everything there is a deadline. And the deadline for this is I think the 17th of February?
Beau Brendler: Oh that’s plenty of time.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: It gives you - basically it waits until your next NARALO call and it's a few days after your next NARALO call, so you have a full month to work on this. And we really hope that we get input from NARALO. It's really important that we all have a say in this because really that’s us determining the way that we will integrate our strategy with ICANN strategy. And if we manage to do that we will get more money. And if we manage to get more money we will be able to do more things. So that’s it, thank you.
Beau Brendler: Sounds great, thank you. And we aint shy here in the NARALO Olivier so I am sure we will get some good input and feedback. And we definitely appreciate having you join us on the call. Thank you very much, Olivier.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: You're welcome, thanks I'm enjoying it.
Beau Brendler: Okay so let's move to Number 6, Eduardo asked for five minutes to give us an update on San Francisco Showcase Working Group, Eduardo take it away.
Eduardo Diaz: I don’t have too much to say except there was a call for volunteers and are you there?
Beau Brendler: Yes.
Eduardo Diaz: Somebody answered that call but I'm not sure who else is volunteer and I think there is going to be [inaudible00:47:11] to make our first conference call to get things going. That’s basically what I have.
Beau Brendler: Okay yeah I think that’s a Doodle that -
Eduardo Diaz: [Inaudible00:47:23] wants to watch that.
Beau Brendler: Okay I think that’s the Doodle that Gisella is working on and Annalisa asked about earlier I believe. So we will circle back on that. Okay update on the Applicant Guidebook Alternate Text Working Team and JAS Working Group from Evan.
Evan Leibovitch: Yeah I think you already got that embedded in my earlier comments.
Beau Brendler: In your earlier comments, yeah I think the same. Okay so we will move on to Item 8 Update from the At-Large Improvements Work Team. We already have heard from Gareth. And I'm actually going to jump to the fourth one WTD ALAC Policy Development because we haven’t heard a lot from Chris Grunderman. I would like to welcome him to briefly speak on that topic. Am I putting you on the spot there Chris?
Chris Grunderman: Just a tad, I did miss the last Working Team D call unfortunately due to conflict with the Consumer Electronics Show here.
Beau Brendler: Well I've got a confession so did I, so let's leave WTD off the plate for the moment and go to Work Team A, ALAC Opinion Purpose, Evan and Eric are our representatives on that. Evan or Eric one of you in particular want to talk about his, or? Eric’s got his hand up, Eric do you want to address this or?
Eric Brunner Williams: I was trying to ask a question on Item 7.
Beau Brendler: Oh.
Eric Brunner Williams: It can wait.
Beau Brendler: I tell you what can I ask you to take that to the chat and ask it in the chat because I want to make sure we get through our agenda here. Evan did you want to comment on Work Team A?
Evan Leibovitch: Only just to briefly repeat what I had mentioned before that we’re actually working on bylaw text.
Beau Brendler: Okay.
Evan Leibovitch: Preamble to the sections that talk about At-Large that will definitively in a way far stronger than exists right now, define At-Large as the channel through which the At-Large community is represented within ICANN.
Beau Brendler: Great, okay. Now the all important topic of ALS participation, we have Annalisa and Darlene working on that. Either or both of you want to give us a quick update on the progress of that work team?
Annalisa: Yes I can speak a word, if you can hear me. Did I turn off my mute?
Beau Brendler: No we can hear ya.
Annalisa: Okay so this is Annalisa. Working Team B is, as Beau just mentioned, is very interested in enhancing participation from bottom up to ALAC. So we further discussed a new proposal from Sandra and she has a Power Point that’s going to be circulated soon through email as also - I haven’t seen it yet but it's supposed to be on the Working Team B page and what it is is an educational proposal to take place at ICANN meetings.
And it would target new people locally and also fellowship people brining them into the ICANN process, not just ALAC but sort of as a whole so that if they get involved in their ALSs or start new ALSs it will be more comprehensive for them and we’re thinking we can get more deeply interested and understanding within the people that want to join. So we think that’s a good approach, so we’re working on that.
There was also discussion about the community page that is relatively new and how we might be able to integrate ALSs in that system. In other words, provide benefits such as a page per ALS so that they would have a place to store information and interact with the RALOs which then would have more information to take to ALAC, sort of inviting them in the community on that level. One of the discussions which we are actually looking at is what would some benefits maybe be?
In ICANN one of the things that’s on the table is if ICANN wanted to give an AC room for the use of an ALS at no charge, would that be something that would be useful to ALSs and also in a way getting them more involved and more aware of ALAC and ICANN. So San Francisco Bay ISCO offered to look into that and kind of discuss it.
I brought that to our Board meeting earlier last week and we were open to it but we couldn’t figure out what the use would be to be honest. But I did tell Working Team B that I would bring this to NARALO and maybe other ALSs represented here on this call might have a voice or an idea about that, which you guys could get back to me on. But that’s definitely a possibility and available if it would help draw in more members.
Also there would be some technology programs and tips and education on how to use the community site for dissemination of information in both directions. ALS up through RALOs to ALAC and ALAC back down to the ALSs establishing more interest, more information, more getting involved. Darlene do you want to add something there?
Darlene: Oh that’s excellent Annalisa.
Annalisa: Okay there are other things in the works that we are working on and I think looking at it right here - I think that was about it as far as new things. There was some recommendations that are more than a year out so I'm not going to use this time for it.
Beau Brendler: Okay.
Annalisa: But that’s it and we really enjoyed having Olivier on the call and my understanding is he has been on all the Working Team calls to really get a handle on this and trying to figure out how to integrate the RALOs more into ALAC I think. So thank you, okay.
Beau Brendler: Thank you Annalisa, appreciate that. Alan you have your hand up, you have a brief comment or question?
Alan Greenberg: Yeah I just wanted to comment on the concept of having ALS web pages. And I would strongly support that. I think the utility is that right now many ALSs have a website. Each of them are different. It's very difficult to find anything there and if there was a simple one page per ALS on the - findable directly from our website, which says one paragraph on what's the purpose of this ALS? Who do we contact for additional information?
What's the process for someone who wants to join the ALS if that’s applicable and just that kind of thing that that’s the face you want to put forward to the public in a standardized format, I think would be very useful. So I would support that kind of concept. It wouldn’t be to replace the websites that an ALS may have in it's own right, but to augment it and provide the easy to find information hung off of the ICANN and ALAC website I think would be very useful, thank you.
Beau Brendler: Yes, I agree.
Darlene: Hand up.
Beau Brendler: Go ahead. Yeah it sort of sounds like the sort of thing one could ask the mother ship for the funding if the idea was developed, so that’s good. Okay I want to move on quickly because we are right at the top of the hour.
Darlene: Hand up.
Beau Brendler: Hello.
Darlene: Beau I just wanted to make a quick comment. I'm sorry I can't get on to Adobe Connect right now. It's Darlene and I just wanted to mention something to what Alan was saying.
Beau Brendler: Sure, please.
Darlene: If you remember - well those that were in Cartagena, remember back to the showcase that the LACRALO did and they did all these really nice little fact sheets. They were just a simple one pager on each and every ALS and provided pretty much exactly what Alan was just mentioning about. And I thought well if we were going to do that for our San Francisco Showcase then we would have a firm basis electronically to do these little web pages that would be just perfect. And then it's just a matter of ICANN hosting them and that’s something that was just floating around in my brain.
Annalisa: That’s an excellent suggestion Darlene I think.
Beau Brendler: That would be great.
Male: I love that idea.
Beau Brendler: Yeah, yeah definitely. Okay Item 9 on the agenda, Recent and Upcoming Activity. I think we've kind of already hit that unless Evan or Gareth has any specific ones. I don’t necessarily want to put Mark on the hot seat unless he wants to chime in. Any recent and upcoming activities in ALAC that we haven’t addressed yet that we need to know about?
Mark: Well this is Mark chiming in and -
Beau Brendler: Excellent.
Mark: I know I'm very new to all of this but I did write to Heidi earlier and said that with the upcoming meeting in San Francisco it created a possibility organizing like a town hall. Now I understand there is an event called an ALAC Showcase and maybe that’s the same concept. But I had in mind a very big, very public forum with speakers possibly done at Stanford University because that would draw a lot of people to help promote conversation between the ICANN world and the larger user world. And Heidi said that she thought that sounded interesting so I'm just conveying that thought here.
Beau Brendler: Well I think that - this is Beau by the way - I just speaking personally I think that would be fantastic. That’s usually not what showcases are but I'm sure that within NARALO you would find a great deal of support for trying to do either both or make one be the other or incorporate one as part of the other. So I think that’s an excellent suggestion. I think we need to get some pretty quick response on the list because something like that can be tough to organize and of course the more lead time you have the better.
So can we make it a point this week to try to engage in a little discussion on the list? Mark I know your time is minimal; do you have any time to participate in the working group on the showcase itself?
Mark: Sure if I understand what that means.
Beau Brendler: Well it's sounds more - it sounds fancier than it is. It’s just a group of us that are trying to meet to figure out what exactly the NARALO presence at the San Francisco meeting should be and I think that what you're proposing would be pretty awesome. So I don’t know does anybody have any comments on this issue that Mark has raised? It's really got me feeling enthusiastic.
Annalisa: My hand is up Beau when you have a chance.
B; Yep we have Annalisa, we have Eric. Annalisa can you be first?
Annalisa: Okay so I - as you know, I live here in the Bay area so I'm a NARALO down on the ground person here.
Beau Brendler: Yep.
Annalisa: And Eduardo and I and I guess Gisella, so our next step is we are putting together this little meeting with the Doodle tool which I'm sorry I haven’t seen, so. It sounds like that’s the same meeting we should discuss this at. And one thing that just comes to mind right now is I did notice in some correspondence with ICANN about other things that there is some reference to this ICANN meeting as the ICANN San Francisco-Silicon Valley meeting. I've seen that in a couple of emails and references. So that certainly kind of ties in with his idea with Stanford.
On the other hand I just want to point out that they are 60 miles apart and so it's an hour in timeframe. So we would just want to consider that if we are going to be shuttling people from Union Square to Stanford that is 60 miles. But I'm all for it. I go down there - I go to Stanford and I've been to the Research Institute and stuff so maybe I can help in that way. But we just need to be realistic because scheduling is really the issue.
Beau Brendler: Yeah I think we can probably find a way to make it work because at some of these meetings ICANN spends tons of time and money shuttling people on buses to Dallas that are -
Annalisa: Yeah and if they are calling this the San Francisco-Silicon Valley Meeting there may be other events already taking place in Silicon Valley and then it would kind of make sense to piggyback on that if people are going to be down there on a certain day or that kind of thing. So it's worth researching a little bit about ICANN’s schedule with what they are doing.
Beau Brendler: That would be fantastic. Okay well let me ask this or propose this, Matthias are you listening? Matthias are you on the call?
Annalisa: Matthias is typing.
Beau Brendler: Oh okay well I'm just going to give this to Matthias because he circled back to everyone who has asked about the next scheduling phase in the showcase, so that Mark and everybody gets on the same page as to when to have the first meeting because I think, you know, the faster the better in terms of organizational time.
Annalisa: Yeah so Beau are we waiting for - did I miss the Doodle or are we waiting for a new Doodle to come out just so we know -
Matthias: Annalisa, yeah sorry we were just discussing possible meeting times today, so we will have the Doodle ready tomorrow.
Annalisa: Okay so let us know and I will definitely be on the meeting.
Matthias: Okay great.
Annalisa: Thank you.
Beau Brendler: Terrific, Eric has his hand up, we are now at seven minutes after 4, is it brief Eric?
Eric Brunner Williams: Actually I think what mark has proposed is not really so much the showcase but a town hall event which is a separate proposal which I find interesting.
Beau Brendler: Yeah I agree, definitely. Anybody else with a comment on that? Okay so I think that takes us to - well Recent and Forthcoming Activity of NARALO Members, anybody have anything specific on that they want to chime in with? I have something, let's see if anybody’s’ got a hand up, no okay. so at the bottom of this page that I'm going off of, which is the community page, I mentioned some updates on the consumer constituency.
So I won't go through that because you can just read it there but I'm very - after like two years of trying to do this I'm really excited at this point that it looks like it might actually happen. And it might actually happen with some participation from the NCSG and people getting - I mean basically we are going to work together with Alex Cotura’s group and we have been doing that and rewrite the charter. And that’s all terrific stuff. So mark has noted that or Mark as asked if the document I referred to is online. I will answer his question here by saying no it's not.
It's actually in the possession of Avri Doria but I will simply send you a copy of it because the sooner we get to rewriting the passages of that that need to be rewritten the better the chance that we can actually formulate this thing in San Francisco which would be great for momentum purposes. Okay any other business, Item 11?
Male: I had my hand up on this one.
Beau Brendler: Yeah we have Alan and Eduardo and Eric so I think I saw Alan first, so go ahead Alan.
Alan Greenberg: No Adobe puts them in the order they were raised so Eric is first.
Beau Brendler: Okay Eric go ahead.
Eric Brunner Williams: Hooray for me. The temporary drafting group legal will be meeting in Thursday next, I think on the 27th and that is actually an issue that is a significance to the final version of the guidebook. Anyone with questions please contact me, thank you.
Beau Brendler: Thank you very much Eric, Alan?
Alan Greenberg: Yeah regarding the consumer constituency, there has been a private conversation going on related to something else but I thought I would raise the overall issue. This used to be two different definitions of consumer floating around. One is that consumers on the internet are - is essentially related to financial transactions on the internet. That is if you buy something or sell something or subject to phishing that’s consumer issues.
The other is a consumer of the internet itself which essentially maps to every user in the world and these are two different groups. And can you clarify is this consumer constituency looking at primarily the former or the wider definition of consumer?
Beau Brendler: The Alex Cotura and Beau Brendler definition of consumer is yes people who use the internet, no limited to financial transactions but consumer being in the sense that a consumer organization or someone else would conceptualize it.
Alan Greenberg: Okay because the draft charters that I've seen have sentences in it saying things like “those who do financial transactions are the main focus.”
Beau Brendler: Well no, no that’s actually the whole point of this document that I referred to which is that’s an old charter so the document that I put together is basically pointing out to the community here are all the old parts of that thing, including what you just mentioned Alan, that need to be rewritten.
Alan Greenberg: Okay that’s good news, thank you.
Beau Brendler: Yep, Eduardo I have next.
Eduardo Diaz: Yes I just to remind you and encourage anybody in the NARALO that the Noncom has an opening and it's looking for eight positions to fill. We are filling to Board members, Board Director Members, three ALAC members and those are the Asia, Africa and Latin America seats, two in the GNSO, and one in the DPNSO. So I encourage anybody that wants to help ICANN and participate in Noncom to do it, that’s it.
Beau Brendler: Very good.
Eduardo Diaz: The deadline is April 4th.
Beau Brendler: Okay alright well I don’t see any other hands up. I appreciate the indulgence of you all for sticking with us for an extra 12 minutes and I will try in my second conference call next month to move this along so we finish on time. Anybody else have any final comments? Okay thank you very much and thanks. We had more than a dozen people for this meeting and I'm delighted so talk to you in a month.
Alan Greenberg: Thanks for a good meeting Beau.
Beau Brendler: Bye-bye.
Male: Thanks Beau.
Male: See ya.
Male: Thank you Beau.
Annalisa: Thank you.
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