Summary Minutes 20 August 2008 D Michel Transcript

The following is a transcription of Denise Michel's statement to the 20 August 2008 Teleconference for complete clarity.

Denise Michel (audio recording 59m 50s to 1:04:50)

"So ultimately, the budget and travel funding are community decisions, lead by the Board. So, I think it’s important to keep in mind a few elements here.

One, nothing essentially will change for At-Large primarily untill a year from now. At the end of this fiscal year, around next June we will have a full review of the current travel guidelines, in addition to full public consultation and building the next fiscal year budget. So there will be ample opportunity to discuss this, to have community dialogue, input and a full review and potential revision of how we handle the budget in the next fiscal year as well as travel guidelines.

There is also, I think, a great misunderstanding in terms of the Board resolution and, in particular, the term « mature ». I think it’s important to keep in mind that the perspective and timeline for At-Large really starts in 2002 for the Board. In 2002, every member of the At-Large Advisory Committee was appointed by the Board, there was no At-Large Structures, no Regional At-Large Organization and essentially no Staff. We are now, in a position, of course, of having all At-Large Advisory Committe members elected – except for the NomCom appointees. We have five firmly established regional organizations, well over a hundreth ALSes. We have three full-time staff to support the At-Large community and we have an At-Large community that contributes regularly and very significantly to ICANN. That is the context in which the term « mature » was used. It was intended, my understanding and sitting on all the Board discussion on the matter, as a tribute to the sucess of At-Large over the last six years and I hope you take it in that spirit.

The other context that we need to keep in mind is that there are a number of other communities within ICANN that have been asking for travel funding. So, the same challenges that At-Large finds in term of volunteering, not having company support and needing to come to ICANN meetings, we have heard similar issues of a number of other individuals and communitites within ICANN and the travel guidelines are an effort to adress broader needs within the community. So we are trying to work with the community to find out what the community thinks is a fair and balanced approach to travel.

At-large, of course, as well as the other communities that participate in ICANN are intented to be primarily online collaborative decision making efforts. We recognize the importance of face-to-face meetings and are attempting to strive the right balance to support, probably a rotating number of individuals to attend ICANN face-to-face meetings but at the same time we are increasing the funding for translation, increasing funding and providing new resources for online collaboration for the next year as well as increasing Staff support and outreach improvement for not only the GNSO and the ccNSO supporting organizations but also for At-Large.
And than in terms of some practical issues that have been adressed in the email list but haven’t been mentioned today, you know, we also try to provide funding for Jaqueline Morris and Hong Xue to attend the Cairo meeting, you know, grandfathering, the term « grandfather » I mean, under the previous commitment and expectation to ensure that they can finish out their term as ccNSO liaison and IDN issue leader. We also like to support two or three members of At-Large who are key Summit organizers and attend the Cairo meeting to ensure that the organizational elements for the At-large Summit are completed and we will cover that out of the At-Large Summit budget. I am happy to answer additional question that come up."