[ALAC] At-Large and ICANN72

Tue Oct 12 14:49:41 UTC 2021

Dear Maureen,

thank you for your kind follow-up and explanation. I'll relay the point 
made that ICANN decided that the meeting was going to be over three 
weeks, as well as Gisella's note that the At-Large week details will be 
sent out to the other SO AC Lists.
Kindest regards,

Olivier

On 11/10/2021 19:49, Maureen Hilyard wrote:
> Hi Olivier and all
>
> Well that sounds like that was an interesting meeting, and great to 
> see that what At-Large is doing is being seen as impacting to some 
> level of importance on other areas of ICANN.
>
> *ICANN decided that the meeting was going to be over three weeks.* The 
> ICANN community is now experiencing its sixth virtual meeting, and 
> half of the community live outside of the European and the US time 
> zones. Not surprisingly, ICANN statistics have shown that the 
> attendance by the other half of the world has not been great. For 
> At-Large, I wanted to look at how we could use the ICANN meeting time 
> more effectively to get more attendance and participation among those 
> members who have not or could not attend even our own sessions at 
> ICANN meetings. Naturally, we would welcome participants from other 
> communities to join into our sessions and hope that they do not feel 
> disadvantaged by our making use of what is considered to still be 
> within the ICANN meeting timeframe.
>
> The week in between Prep Week and the ICANN meeting, despite whatever 
> purpose ICANN originally intended, was created as the At-Large Week 
> for the convenience of our community members whom we are encouraging 
> to attend _our_ sessions at least.  It has given us an opportunity to 
> experiment and do something different that considers our community of 
> volunteers first, and to look at how it might impact their 
> participation and attendance. Because they are real volunteers, many 
> cannot sustain the timeframe of a full-on ICANN meeting even over four 
> days.
>
> Because of my lone timezone, I myself have found that trying to stay 
> awake across a block of nearly 10 hours in the middle of the night to 
> attend irregular sessions has been very difficult, and more so when I 
> have also had to work during my daylight hours. It has taken me at 
> least a couple of weeks to get back to some sort of normality after a 
> meeting.
>
> The At-Large week schedule is being held during what is our normal 
> At-Large meeting times and at a more manageable load of two sessions a 
> day.  Our sessions do not conflict with other ICANN community sessions 
> as they normally do when we participate in an ICANN meeting. At-Large 
> involvement in the ICANN meeting this time is minimal and enables our 
> members to attend other community sessions and to learn about what is 
> of interest to the rest of the ICANN community.  Our social media 
> working group will be doing its best to ensure that other ICANNN 
> communities are informed of our sessions as well as those of other 
> communities that might be of interest to At-Large.
>
> I find it interesting that at a time when ICANN itself is asking the 
> wider community how they think future meetings will be held, that some 
> ICANNers are persisting that other communities must fit their 
> expectations. Fortunately, we have been given an opportunity to 
> consider what best meets the needs of our community first. There were 
> no objections made when it was first raised at the SOAC meeting nor 
> during our own planning sessions. However, if we find at the end of 
> the ICANN meeting that it had no real effect then so be it. Back to 
> the drawing board.
>
> I hope that helps.
> Regards
> Maureen
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 4:16 AM Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond 
> <ocl at gih.com> wrote:
>
>     Dear Maureen,
>
>     I am just off a call with UK ICANN Stakeholders, a sort of an
>     ICANN Read-Out with selected UK based ICANN participants, and I
>     shared the At-Large Activities, both during the ICANN week, but
>     also in the so-called "At-Large Week".
>     Whilst there were congratulatory remarks all about for the
>     At-Large to convene such interesting sessions, two comments, from
>     Susan Payne and Chris Disspain questioned the organising of the
>     "At-Large Week". Susan, in particular, explained that the ICANN72
>     organising committee debated at length how long the ICANN meetign
>     should be, whether it should be a short meeting or a longer one
>     and the consensus that was reached across SO/AC/SG was to have a
>     shorter ICANN week that was 4 days in length.
>     I explained that for the At-Large Community, 4 days were
>     impractical as it had to conduct its own business whilst offering
>     its community the ability to attend plenaries, official meetings
>     of the Board, public forum etc. So the At-Large week was primarily
>     organised for At-Large participants but open to everyone, as in
>     many At-Large meetings. This did not quite satisfy Susan nor
>     Chris: both said that the topics and line-ups of these meetings
>     were very interesting, yet they were not on the public meeting
>     schedule and it would be interesting if they were, so as for many
>     more participants to be able to attend them. Chris in particular
>     mentioned that if members of the ICANN Board were attending these
>     meetings, they should be part of the overall ICANN Schedule. But
>     of course, that cannot happen since this is not technically part
>     of the ICANN meeting.
>
>     So I didn't know what to say. How are the At-Large Week meetings
>     going to be advertised? Are the At-Large happy to have anyone
>     attend? How do you respond to those who say that the At-Large has
>     effectively created, in its policy sessions, more potential
>     plenary ICANN sessions outside the ICANN plenary session schedule,
>     as it has invited guests from across SOs/ACs/SGs etc?
>
>     Kindest regards,
>
>     Olivier
>

-- 
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
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