ALAC ExCom 26.04.11 Transcript

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Okay, so I'll just quickly introduce in this: this is the ALAC ExCom Agenda of the ExCom meeting on the 26th of April, 2011, and the time is 16:12.  And we have a long agenda and I think the first thing we'll do since Roman is right here with us, Roman Pelikh from Computing Services, I gather he will be able to speak to us about the At-Large community Wiki and the creation of the At-Large knowledge base.  And now Cheryl and Roman you can start your discussion.  Thank you.

Roman Pelikh:                         Thank you.  Cheryl, so to address the -- to address the migration.  So what we've done originally when we migrated the SocialText, we have a consultant that took the entire space from the SocialText, and moved it into the -- we moved it into the conference Wiki after which as you know we went through the organization.  As far as what we can see is everything has been migrated. 

                                                We are -- we moved most of the GNSO working spaces and the ccNSO working spaces, so we do have about ten work spaces that kind of orphaned in a sense that we don't know who they belong to.  We are going through that process, but I don't believe any of those work spaces are At-Large.  So if there is any specific that you know that is missing, send us the -- send us the URL, because otherwise, we'll be literally hunting in the dark.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              With the URL I'd been able to find the data in 2009, in 2009/10, when I wanted to look at the historical archives of the APRALO election for all officer from its formation on processes, the SocialText pages that that data was on were unable to be found by me.  And I was assured by our staff then that they were somewhere, they just weren't linked to the new election pages they put up.  So I don't have a URL. 

                                                Unfortunately, if those pages had gone, they've gone a long time ago, and there is a huge insert exclamation marks and stars for the word and adjectives I'd like to put in here, mix up for the archives of the RALOs, and if it happened to APRALO, this has probably happened to others.

Roman Pelikh:                         Yes, so during the migration, as I said, we have not touched the SocialText per se, itself.  So it was -- during the migration, we did the read only type of context.  Unfortunately, from my side, we don't really own the content in there. 

                                                So we -- so I can ask our operations team to look at if they have a copy of the instance, but I don't know which -- if there is anything specific, like the timing when that we could potentially research, I'll need that, and that specific content we're looking for.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Well, let's see what I can speed up.

Alan Greenberg:                      It's Alan, if I could get in please.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              My theory is that these pages have actually gone the way of the wind, and they gone the way of the wind through some form of incompetency, and it has to be staff incompetency long before we started migrating to Confluence.  Those of us who knew the existing pages had rested on some reassurance that in the meantime, a migration to Confluence any orphan pages would be found.  If they’re in the (inaudible) then we've lost them.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Thank you Cheryl, I was going to suggest, did you trying searches using Google, because I found that the SocialText is actually well-indexed by Google.  And when you do a search with a site called st.ICANN.org and the actual search that you want, you do find a lot of pages that date from -- as far back as 2006.

Alan Greenberg:                      Olivier, can I get in please.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          And Alan, yes, sorry --

Alan Greenberg:                      Let me try to go through what I think is the sequence.  If you have -- which we had a situation on Thursday, where page A points to page B.  Page A is later revised and the link is eliminated.  So an old version of page A is still pointing to B, but the current version of page A is now no longer pointing to B. 

                                                So unless you go through each of the potentially 50 or 100 revisions on page A, you will never see that link.  When you did the migration, did you migrate every page, or only the pages pointed to by the current predecessors?

Roman Pelikh:                         When we did the migration, we picked up all the pages, including orphan pages, although they may not be linked. 

Alan Greenberg:                      Okay, so the question is did you do anything with those orphaned pages?  Did you point them all -- you know link them all from one list, orphan list or something like that, so that we could at least look at them and find them.

Roman Pelikh:                         Yes.  So from the, as I said, from the -- on the Confluence, we have not touched anything in the SocialText.  There was no work performed in the SocialText other than extracting the content.

Alan Greenberg:                      No, my question is do you have a new Confluence page somewhere which lists, simply a whole bunch of links to all of the orphaned pages?

Roman Pelikh:                         Yes, so all the old work spaces and I have to look it up to give you an example, some of the old spaces that have not been organized yet, essentially have a list of all the pages in the -- in the non-organized structure. 

                                                And they may or may not be linked but they should be available through the search.  So if the page was available in the SocialText, it should be in the Confluence.  If we -- so the only thing we could have missed, is if the content actually exists in the SocialText that we haven't moved, we haven't been able to find any of that context.

Alan Greenberg:                      Okay, two questions, when you moved a page from SocialText, you moved the current version of it, or do you move the whole history of it?

Roman Pelikh:                         It moves -- it moves the most current version of the page.

Alan Greenberg:                      Okay, so any page -- any page that might have been linked in a previous version, that link will not have been moved.  Now, you said --

Roman Pelikh:                         Correct, but the underlying page, because the page is still, although it may not be linked, the page that would be linked to would still be there.

Alan Greenberg:                      And how do we find a list of all of the unlinked pages?  What Cheryl was calling the orphan pages?  For any given work space is there a place somewhere where you can find, here are the 300 pages that we found scattered in the work space, we don't know where they belong, but here's the list of them.

Roman Pelikh:                         Yes, so this is from -- for all of the -- let me give you an example.  Some of the old pages --

Alan Greenberg:                      How does one get to the list of -- pointing to all the old pages?

Roman Pelikh:                         So as an example, there is a work space -- one, you have to be logged into the Confluence, there is a work space called ALAC AAA old.  That has about from 2007, 2006, 2009, and some of that has to do with the -- with the usage and some of that is actual content.  So when we migrate the pages, we even migrated statistics from SocialText as well.

Alan Greenberg:                      How do we find ALAC AAA old?  How do we get to that?

Roman Pelikh:                         Log into the -- if you actually log into Confluence.

Alan Greenberg:                      I'm logged in.

Roman Pelikh:                         In the At-Large community --

Alan Greenberg:                      Yeah.

Roman Pelikh:                         Do you see work spaced called ALAC AAA old?

Alan Greenberg:                      No, I don't.  Where would one look?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              And I never have either, but I'm re-logging in now.

Alan Greenberg:                      Tell me where on the screen to look, because I'm looking where I see work spaces, and I don't see anything by that name.

Roman Pelikh:                         Give me one second.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Olivier, while they're doing that, I have performed and gee I'm sorry, I didn't remember the Google searches, in detail that I performed in 2009, but I performed them again now. 

                                                If you perform a search on APRALO Elections 2007, and that's the type of data I'm looking for, you will find nothing certainly not in the first three or four pages.  If you just do APRALO Elections, you will find reference in a Google search to the 2007 elections, which are other ALS pages talking about their involvement in the upcoming Bali meeting and you know the (inaudible) association is going to stand for a position, etc., etc.. 

                                                Not the SocialText pages, not coming up on the search, and I just want 57 revisions on the APRALO election page SocialText page, and the earliest revision is a 2010 page.  So it's been lost.  Those same pages have you know founding documents, forming documents, anyway, there you go. 

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          I hear you and well, don't have any comment about it.  I might have to --

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              I fear that all the regions -- all the regions better have a damn good look at what has not gotten in all, and has got nothing with migrating to Confluence.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Yes, it seems that it was deleted in the SocialText itself, is that correct.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              These appear to me, having gone back through revisions to be pre 2009-’10 era in the SocialText.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Well, may I ask Roman whether there are any backups to this SocialText that are around from those dates?

Roman Pelikh:                         Yes, so that's what I need to check with the operations group and see if there's a -- if there is any -- remember the SocialText is run in the (inaudible), so it's not one of -- one of the reasons why we were trying to switch, because we don't have control over the -- over administering the system as we would otherwise. 

                                                But I will double check with the operations team to see, so but what period of time, I need a little bit more specific, what are we looking for --

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Anything -- any March 2007 for APRALO.

Roman Pelikh:                         2007 APRALO?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Yep.

Alan Greenberg:                      Cheryl, had you --

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              That is the founding meeting in Bali, 7th of March 2007 there's results, election results being recorded in other institutional pages, like AKMS4.news and things like that.  And there is nothing from ICANN.

Alan Greenberg:                      Cheryl, had you tried rolling back the APRALO pages to that time frame, and see whether there is pointers then?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              The election page, yes, it took me back through 37 revisions, only to 2010 nothing pre that.  And by the way, I discovered this problem real and truly before 2010.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Now, the only other way that I could actually imagine, if those are totally lost, is to actually go to a site on archive.org, but one would need to know what the URL is, the exact URL, and basically we find a place where it goes you know, “unfound URL” or this “URL is empty.”

Alan Greenberg:                      It would be useful, Roman if you can tell us how to find this AA.old or AAold page.  It doesn't have to be in this meeting, but if you can give us detailed instructions on how to locate it because I haven't been able to navigate through it.

Roman Pelikh:                         Sure.  Well, let me give it one more shot right now, and maybe you could have access to it.  Click on the At-Large community tab.

Alan Greenberg:                      One moment, I've got to get back to it.

Roman Pelikh:                         It should be this third one on the list.

Alan Greenberg:                      The At-Large community.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Oh, I'm there now.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Roman, may I ask, if when does a search within the community pages, if one does a search that -- before you added this AAA pages, would that have precluded the search from going into these pages and looking for them?

Roman Pelikh:                         No, it shouldn't, because it should all permission based.  So I'll double check some of the old orphan pages, and he can see this work space is not -- it's just a list of things, it's not organized in any way.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              All right.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          But there's certainly some names I don't know in there, so --

Evan Leibovitch:                     Hello everyone.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Hi Evan.  We're currently looking at the ALAC space well, At-Large spaces in the community pages to try and find anything that might have been lost.  Heidi, you put your hand up?

Heidi Ullrich:                          Yes.  Following on from my suggestion in the chat, there Cheryl could work with Matt and Roman on this issue.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Well, I'm more than happy to, but I think we probably need to alert someone in the other regions as well, because I would be astonished if it was just an APRALO issue.

Roman Pelikh:                         Yes, Cheryl, from your perspective, there is another work spaces list.  If you click on the --

Alan Greenberg:                      And this AA old, there's not a lot that goes back before late 2007, or middle 2007 it looks like.

Roman Pelikh:                         Yes, but there is a number of those work spaces, the easiest way for me to get you guys to is it, is if you click on -- let's click on the At-Large Community tab on the top.  On the -- right underneath that you will see At-Large Community, and there is a small triangle to the left of that. 

                                                When you highlight it, it's going to say "dashboard", click on that.  You'll get to the dashboard.  Scroll all the way down it's beyond the category called "help"; you'll see old, old ALAC kind of historical pages and whatnot.  So Cheryl, the third one is ALAC Asia Pac, I'm assuming its APRALO, work space. 

                                                And there's the stuff there from 2009, 2007, as far as I can see.  But I don't know if there is -- yeah, there's some 2005, 2006 items, but specific things.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              (inaudible) and I'm just trying to find the dashboard page to come up in (inaudible), and I haven't got that (inaudible) up, I don't see it.  I mean (inaudible) so that would make some sense.

Roman Pelikh:                         I barely can hear you.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              (inaudible)  Let's move on.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Well I think that -- what I suggest is that you might pick this up, maybe tomorrow or later on in the week again, just you Cheryl and Roman, if you haven't found the pages, and --

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              I won't be -- I won't be doing anything on this until the middle of next week.  I wasn't doing very much of anything until the middle of next week.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Okay, well, whenever is suitable basically for you to do this, because it's something that -- there are some things which we can't quite navigate to, it might be something to do with the permissions, or it might be just that we don't know where to look for it, and certainly be able to dig through all of this old archives is very important.  We need to be able to access that, because that's the history of At-Large and the history of ALAC that is in question.

Adam Greenberg:                    I think we need to remember this as we revise pages in the future.  History is important.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Definitely, and certainly if we start seeing that older versions of pages get deleted automatically, that's not something that we would like to --

Alan Greenberg:                      Even if they're not deleted, if they're not findable, they may as well have been deleted.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Exactly, yes, exactly.  Okay, anything else Roman, that you wish to speak to us about?

Roman Pelikh:                         So there's a couple more items from what I got from Heidi as what we wanted out today, and you guys mentioned you were looking for the -- to develop a knowledge base of some sort. 

                                                So I wanted to find out a little bit more information, what type of information, what is the knowledge base is going to be for, so we can give you kind of suggestions and ideas of what -- how to structure this potentially, and what it's going to be used for. 

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          The knowledge base is not only a piece of software, but is also a complete system, so as for essentially knowledge that At-Large and ALAC has acquired over time, not to get lost.  So it is I would say on the software side, instead of pages that are organized in a way as to be able to get hold of essential information; to give you an idea, there were elections that took place recently in the -- in various regions. 

                                                There are lessons learned from those elections.  There is usually a -- some kind of document, a post-election document that is written about lessons learned, and that then vanishes in the ether of the community pages as a "not found".  And a few years down the line, new elections will take place, and the same mistakes might be made, or the same questions will be raised without an answer being available. 

                                                So having the knowledge base is something that is essentially not something huge, but it is something important.  And I just wondered how you could set this up, whether it would set in community pages or elsewhere.

Roman Pelikh:                         Yeah, so we can -- I mean just hearing what you guys are looking for, one way of doing this is setting up -- setting up a specific work space where not necessarily are you going to have the content duplicated, but you can link to the actual elections and whatnot, or to the documents that refer to the lessons learned or whatnot, from that single space. 

                                                And we can add that work space into the regular tool box that you have on the At-Large space, so it would be easier to navigate to those types of items and that that space will essentially be a collection of references to those types of materials. 

                                                So I think what we would like to get from you guys is a list of initial things that would be important to add to the knowledge base, and we can work with that to set a knowledge base area, with at least that content as a start, and then as you guys come up with new things, we'll be able to add content into it.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Okay, thank you; and I think that we're really running out of time.  We've started a bit late.  We've got a meeting right afterwards, after this meeting, so Roman, thank you for joining us.  If you can go and follow up with Cheryl, when her time allows, and then follow up with us, and if we have any more questions, if we can get back to you. 

Roman Pelikh:                         Sure.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              (Crosstalk) sometime after the third of next month, so let's make a date.

Roman Pelikh:                         Cheryl feel free to send me an email and we'll arrange something.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Thank you.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Okay, thanks very much.  And we'll now move then to the next items and having shuffled things around, the next thing is review of the action items of the ExCom meeting of the 14th of April 2011, and I can see a whole lot of action items, and I just wonder how long this is going to take us. 

                                                Heidi, do you have a suggestion about going through these, because they're very -- oh, sorry, Evan, you had your hand up, sorry about that.

Evan Leibovitch:                     Oh, well no, you say we're running -- we're running low on time, I had some questions for Roman.  With the JAS process, I've been running into some huge obstacles trying to get multiple people collaborating on Wiki pages, and I didn't know if it's appropriate to ask that here.

Roman Pelikh:                         We can take that off line, just send me an email and we'll deal with it off line.

Evan Leibovitch:                     All right.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Some of what I thought was missing is in this old Asia-Pac space, so for heavens sake, don't delete anything.  Because there's a whole lot of orphan pages that we've now got to weave back together.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Okay, Heidi.

Heidi Ullrich:                          I'm looking at the ExCom action items, and I see that most of them are either completed or in progress.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          All right, progress.

Heidi Ullrich:                          And the only remaining ones are -- that don't indicate their status, is the Singapore meeting, then we have a staff -- or we have an agenda item on that for this meeting.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Okay, perfect, so we'll move swiftly over to the next item in the agenda, and that is the follow up from the -- well, from the ALAC meeting of the 22nd of February, and that was the proposed ALAC statement to the ICANN Board on the RAA negotiations. 

                                                In fact, it's not the meeting on the 22nd of February, it's the meeting of the 26th of February, it's today, isn't it?

Evan Leibovitch:                     Today's not February.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              I don’t think today is February.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          It's not even February, oh God, it's April, the 26th of April, that's interesting how they -- the agenda is completely wrong, and I'm getting it wrong twice. 

Evan Leibovitch:                     No, we're all just in a time warp.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          So a statement on the other ICANN Board RAA negotiations, we had a long discussion earlier in the call -- anything that we can add to this?  I guess we've got Alan, who is going to work on that and with a few others.

Evan Leibovitch:                     I offered up though and almost immediately after saying so, I got called away into that Skype chat with Bertrand, and so I apologize for that, but I'm still interested in doing that.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Okay, well, you might have missed then the fact that we do have some time to send this out.  It's not a case of shooting from the hip.  It's a case of aiming very carefully and writing something that is sharp, while at the same time not offending anyone. 

                                                So we have time to refine it, and I guess with Alan and you involved, it's in very capable hands, and obviously I'll take a look at it, and I guess we can all take a good look at it.

Evan Leibovitch:                     And then you had to put in that bit about not offending anyone.

Alan Greenberg:                      If you want me to write it, you may offend someone.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Find some self-control, Evan, come on.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Any sentence which has no offense, or starts by in all due respect, means that you're going to offend someone anyway.  But you know that's just a courtesy way of doing things. 

                                                Anyway, and I didn't say that, but -- anyway, obviously it's bound to offend if it's going to have any --

Alan Greenberg:                      It doesn't have to offend them, they just have to disagree.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Well, yes, but some people get offended by the smallest of things.  Anyway, so I think we've got, we're running on that.

                                                The next one they need this draft on the applicant guidebook for the new gTLDs, and that's a question, because we didn't actually have time to look at this in the ALAC call, but does the ALAC want to write more comments on the latest AG?  And Heidi you have your hand up.

Heidi Ullrich:                          Sorry, no, I haven't put mine down, sorry.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Okay, any comments, apart from a sigh, bearing in mind that what we have written is a pretty clear position, but there has been a -- some feedback from the GAC, well feedback from a GAC member about some of the input.  Evan.

Evan Leibovitch:                     As you say, I don't know how much more that we have to say that hasn't been said, I mean there's not -- from my cursory reading, there's not a whole lot that's changed.  There's basically that the locomotive is heading to Singapore, and there is a couple of things like -- like the JAS and other things like that. 

                                                There's a possibility that some of the things the GAC is asking for may still come into play in ways that will help our concerns about the objectionable strings, but we're now at the point where even if we have something to say, it's too late.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Okay, and with regards to the -- well, anyone else has a view on this, with regards to this?  I gather not.

                                                And with regards to the At-Large Working Group and future challenges, because what I was going to suggest is, I agree with you, Evan, the AG is something we have written at infinite about, and I don't think that we're in a position now, or at least the Board would be accepting any kind of major change or amendment to the AG at this very point in time.  So it really comes down to how much should we say, and what do we have to say about this, and how much we'll be listened to.

Evan Leibovitch:                     Well, I mean we could basically send out a one-letter document saying our concerns have been expressed and not met, and please be aware that this AG goes out with -- goes out with a statement from ALAC, that this has not served the pubic good.  I mean we could put a one-pager just reiterating the stance.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Okay, Alan?

Alan Greenberg:                      Yes, I was going to say something like that, and I would suggest that it have a list of bullets identifying the items that we still have concerns about.  Not listing the concerns, but just you know having pointers to the general areas that we still have concerns about, and I would -- if it's longer than a half a page, it's too long.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Okay, noted, let's put this as an action item for the next -- we have until mid May for this.  So we'll have plenty of time to draft it, but we can put a few things together and start a Wiki page on this.

                                                And the At-Large Working Group and future challenges, this is something we've discussed in the ALAC call earlier, and I believe that's also rolling forward. 

                                                Is there anything that we need to cast in stone now apart from action items, which is to get Jean-Jacques to move forward and propose that he is the interim Chair whilst the group is being formed and is writing its Charter that will then be agreed by ALAC; any other points on this?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Can I just have a brief word, and I'm very aware of the time, Olivier.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Please yes.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Something I exercised self-control in the ALAC meeting about, which I hope you all recognize as a truly wondrous thing that I exercised self-control.  And I didn't say what I wanted to say, and that is that I think it is most appropriate that Jean-Jacques Chair and/or Co-Chair pending on how it gets structured, this group. 

                                                I think that we may be extraordinary wary of at least one of the names put forward as Co-Chair and indeed someone who indicated a great of interest in this activity at the San Francisco meeting, as a serial offender of doing (inaudible), unless it happens to suit a very narrow field of interest. 

                                                I had hoped, as I think many of you had hoped that this would suit her narrow field of interest, and that we would get some mileage out of our particular NomCom appointed member on this, and yes, it's North America.

Evan Leibovitch:                     I have no idea who you're talking about.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              The only way that I think we're going to get real work and any accountability, even in this matter, would be to make that person the specified interface or liaison with a lower-case L, where they have to report back, and they have a particular in the role.  What I wanted to raise in the ExCom is if they think if it's worthwhile.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Well, Cheryl, you know I have my views on this, but I'd like to hear from other members of the ExCom before saying anything.

Evan Leibovitch:                     Sorry, I guess I'm having a senior moment.  Did you say you wanted him to Chair, or you wanted him to be liaison or --

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Well, he's nowhere near Chairing, and if we're going to give him anything, it would be a specified mandated, you're going to be the liaison, and you're bloody well going to report.  And if you fail, there are consequences.  And I am still questioning whether that's even worth the effort.

Evan Leibovitch:                     Well, my opinions are known, so I'm not going to repeat them.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Well, I would second what Cheryl has just suggested.  I think it's a good -- a good idea, it's tough.  It's a tough call, but you know we can give him a chance and certainly there will be a performance related to this position.  So if there's no performance metric, then it's difficult, but since there is a performance metric, then one can swiftly take action, if the performance is not met.

[crosstalk]

Alan Greenberg:                      We haven't proven good at that.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              I'd say this is a lot chancy, I really do.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          I would agree, and I notice that we reaching already well, we've only got 13 minutes until our heart stops, so we'll probably have to move onto the next -- the next bits.  But I think -- I would suggest this as being an action item then.  Jean-Jacques as Chair, Co-Chair, that could be Evan, since I see Evan on the list and suggestion that Marc Rotenberg be the liaison to the ALAC.

Evan Leibovitch:                     I've already made the point that if the applicant guidebook does go through the party as expected in Singapore, then the demands on the gTLD committee of ALAC is going to reduce dramatically.  So I can see myself getting involved in that.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              And I think Evan, it would be highly appropriate if you could.  But I would hate to see us carry dead wood on this one, and I think it does give an opportunity for Jean-Jacques to show up and showcase his skill sets and we need to do that. 

Evan Leibovitch:                     Agreed.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Agreed, Alan you had your hand up.

Alan Greenberg:                      Yes, a comment; you asked for comments on the ExCom, and I'm not one, so I didn't make a comment.  I will make a comment now, however. 

                                                Putting someone in as a liaison and making demands on them doesn't really prove anything, because they can do as little work as they want and still make it look like they're fulfilling that mandate.  If you're trying to prove the case that he's not delivering when he says he wants to, that's not going to -- I don't think that will do it for you.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Yes, Alan, can I just respond to that? 

Alan Greenberg:                      Sure.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              I'm not trying to impress, if I'm trying impress, trust me, I would be.  I'm willing to allow an exposure exercise, which I'm actually showing what commitment other people put into things.  He has so infrequently interacted with ALAC in any meaningful way.  He has not actually had an opportunity to I think observe or learn what the expectations are.

Alan Greenberg:                      And thus would not be able to fulfill the role, and I agree -- I do tend to agree with that.  I'm just saying that when you call this a last ditch effort.  I don't think one is going to prove anything.  If we're trying to prove something, that's not the way to do it.  And making him Chair -- a Co-Chair of this group I don't think is the right way, because we think this group is important.  I just wanted to make that point, that's it.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              And that's why he can't have any importance in that role.

Alan Greenberg:                      Okay, sorry, but someone said this is the prove it, or get out, and I don't think this will prove anything.  But I agree -- I agree with the decision. 

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Yeah, (inaudible).

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          The aim is not to prove anything.  The aim is for him to take an integral part in running the show in ALAC.  I mean doing his bit along with everyone else.  And you know I would hope that he's very good at it.  I think it would be fantastic if we had another very active member, and I'm sure he's very competent to be able to do such a thing. 

                                                It's just that so far, we've had a few disappointments and I really hope that we don't on this one.  He has volunteered, and I'm glad that he has, and I'm looking forward to have him on the team.  Past that, we'll see.  Time will tell.

                                                All right, I think we've done part two of this agenda.  We've only got 8 minutes left, so I was going to then jump to part four in our agenda, which is the initial plan for At-Large meeting in Singapore.  There are three subsections here, the one under the WHOIS Review Team, I'm afraid I still haven't found the details on my computer, so I might have to resort to Heidi explaining to us what's happening on this.  Heidi?

Heidi Ullrich:                          Yes, this was a request that the Review Team, the WHOIS Review Team for the ALAC (crosstalk) and just go have another meeting in Singapore.  So would the ExCom like to go forward with that?

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          We're getting interference from Sebastian (crosstalk).

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              This is important and  I think we should.  Yes, I think we can do it on a Sunday.  I don't think we need to do it in our valuable work time.

Heidi Ullrich:                          Okay, so we'll have maybe have -- over how long would you like?

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Oh, I'll give them 45, 50 minutes.

Heidi Ullrich:                          Okay. 

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              They don't have a hell of a lot to say on WHOIS.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Yes, it's a particularly important subject and certainly not one of the sweetest ones.

Heidi Ullrich:                          Okay, so I'll --

Cheryl Langdon Orr:               I would rather let one before or after a lunch, probably before, and because it's something that you know we can in fact run over about continued conversation on.

Heidi Ullrich:                          Okay, so if we wanted -- I'm assuming that we'll have the majority of the morning be the Working Group issue.  And then we can have 45 minutes on this, and normally -- traditionally we have Scott and Mandy come in for the global partnerships and communications.  We can move that to the afternoon, if you'd like.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              That's probably better, yes.

Heidi Ullrich:                          Okay.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              And in fact, the global partnership and communications, just thinking about what we said about compliance, presuming that we do have a pre-briefing in May about the new compliance (inaudible) plan.  Maybe we could have a communication exercise discussion with the people from Compliance, you know “How can we help and what can we do, and what resources are where?”  And we might perhaps cluster a whole bunch of outreach-style communication topics in the afternoon. 

Heidi Ullrich:                          Excellent, okay.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              If that’s good with-

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Yes, that's fine.  The next thing is the -- the GAC discussions with the GAC.  I have been in touch with Heather and she has asked Jeremy Biehl, who is the GAC secretary to make arrangements to set up a call with the ALAC executives and the GAC Chair and Vice Chairs in May.  So that will come soon.  Evan, you had your hand up.

Evan Leibovitch:                     Yes.  Actually, there's one little action item that comes out of the call I had with Bertand that took me away from a good chunk of the ALAC meeting, and the beginning of this unfortunately. 

                                                One of the things that I think Bertand and I may try and set up is a -- is a -- I can't think of a better word, so I'm going to say some kind of a summit, but on the JAS issue.  That's going to involve GAC members, Board members, ALAC members and other people to basically sit in a room and hammer something out, to try and get through some of the stalemate that we've been getting so far. 

                                                There's been a significant amount of pressure put on the JAS group, the Board saying it's looking for something, the GAC saying we're looking for something, meanwhile you have this small number of a largely At-Large volunteers, not experts in the field, that are being asked to come up with this very, very elaborate and high-pressure criteria. 

                                                Given the difficulties that the group is having in doing that, one of the things he and I appear to be agreeing on is the possibility of setting up some kind of meeting at Singapore that is going to bring the stakeholders into a room and thrash something out.  This of course is under the presupposition that the -- whatever the JAS group comes out is going to be a parallel process to the applicant guidebook, and not a replacement of it.  So this may have a little bit of an impact, because it's going to make requests of GAC people as well.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Okay, so I guess we can do this as a follow up.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              I like where this is heading, but I wouldn't want to take any of the hot irons off the feet of the JAS Working Group for it.

Evan Leibovitch:                     No, I'm not, Cheryl, it's just -- I'm starting to get concerned that the group is being set up for failure, and I don't want it to take the heat for the extremely high expectations that are being put on it by the entire community and have just a very small group of people that are shouldering the entire load.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              I'm coming back to pinning (inaudible) to some people propelled and sending them into (inaudible) and them still coming out as virgins.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Okay, thank you Evan for this update and I think that's definitely something we have to continue working on, and that's something -- an action item for after this meeting.  We've only got 3 minutes left.

                                                The last one was the business constituency, I have emailed Marilyn and she has not come back to me, I will follow up with her.  But she did indicate that she wanted to proceed forward with both a meeting and a social event at some point.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Can I have another one which probably needs to be a parallel or run… I'd really like the opportunity for the registries, I'm sorry the registrars and ALAC interchange to happen in a face-to-face, not as a meeting as a whole, but open obviously anyone can come, but basically Michele, Seth and then whoever we have from our side and myself, obviously Olivier whom I trust and also Evan; you know doing a formal ending, formal tet-a-tet.  I think it's probably the most productive time we'll have whether we do it over a lunch or whatever, I don't know.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Yes, so not a tall group, but just a few people.

Cheryl Langdon-Orr:              Yes, okay, well I've got to change phones as soon as hang up.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Yes, well any other business, we've got one minute for that?

Evan Leibovitch:                     What's the other call, is this something I need to go to?

Heidi Ullrich:                          Yes, we have a call with Patrick Jones on the SSR framework now on [16-8].

Evan Leibovitch:                     Okay.

Heidi Ullrich:                          Very busy morning.

Olivier Crépin-Leblond:          Okay, well thank you very much for all -- for attending, for the first time, we're not usually late at the end of our ALAC ExCom calls, I'm (inaudible) happy, but we'll speak in a few more minutes and this call is adjourned for the time being.

Heidi Ullrich:                          Thank you, good-bye.

[End of Transcript]