[At-Large] Say Whut!

[Maureen Hilyard]

Hi Evan

Just wading in  here because while what you are saying is true in that
ALSes have not delivered for At-Large what was originally envisaged, but my
view is that the real reason was because our (ALAC's) approach and
expectations of them were flawed.

We weren't seeing individuals within the ALSes to their best advantage.
There was too much focus on just because only a few individuals were
participating from within an ALS, it was of lesser value to us. Yet, having
those few active and participating individuals has been really important to
our work, and at the same time they have been active promoters of the work
of At-Large and ICANN in the local communities of their respective
countries. At RALO level, we are now encouraging these active ALS members
to send us the evidence of this outreach to our RALO newsletters, to
demonstrate how they are impacting the grassroots level, small steps at a
time.

As you say it has taken the ALAC and At-Large a long time to recognise that
we need to value our individual members from among our ALSes and as they
grow in their knowledge of our work and their confidence in their own
participation, to encourage them to educate others and hopefully also
engage them with us.  But we must do more to help them with this education
and training process, and we are already working on a plan with the GAC to
try to get ICANN Org support for more appropriate resources that can help
both governments and end-users to enhance their understanding of the issues
that are important to ICANN.

Although we may not have liked to hear what the Review contained, it was a
wake-up call for At-Large. I therefore found it really encouraging that
those who actively participated in the development of our Review
Implementation Plan, were not just addressing the quick fixes of the
At-Large proposal document, but were also focused on continuous improvement
in all areas of the work of At-Large. We have now been given an opportunity
to address what the underlying issues are for our communities, and one of
the things we will be able to do at ATLASIII is to use those in our
At-Large community who are already active in our working groups and
discussions at both the RALO and ALAC levels and who have experienced the
difficulties of engagement, to help us develop improvements in the way we
do things with an aim of gaining more individual participants who are
better informed, enthusiastic and active in the work we have to do in
At-Large.

Maureen


On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 10:27 PM Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 9:07 AM Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca
> wrote:
>
> Our current plan going forward is to use those ALSes as a conduit to their
>> members.
>>
>
> That's not the current plan, that's been the always plan since the ALS
> concept was invented. What has changed now?
>
> If it works, great. If it oesn't then it may well be the time to focus on
>> phasing ALSes out. But I am optimistic.
>>
>
> It's now been a dozen years or so. How much longer will it take to prove
> or disprove?
>
> Bottom line is that except in a few relatively rare cases, work is done by
>> people - wee need to find those people willing and interested to work,
>> regardless of whether they are unaffiliated or hear about us through their
>> ALS.
>>
>
> There are yet other ways of attracting them.
>
> - Evan
>
>
>
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