[At-Large] ICANN75: Selecting Malaysia and inclusiveness

Evan Leibovitch evan at telly.org
Wed Aug 3 06:05:09 UTC 2022


Hi Bill,

On Mon, Aug 1, 2022 at 7:41 PM Bill Jouris via At-Large <
at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:

 the casual, serendipitous chats, which are what create and cement
> effective group efforts, simply don't happen.


I have multiple counter-examples against that assertion.

I am not saying that going more-virtual is not without downsides and
challenges. On the balance, however, the benefits of inclusiveness and
accessibility and reduced costs outweigh the downsides many times over.


>   With serious negative impacts all around.


I challenge that assertion -- ESPECIALLY if the virtual meetings are
augmented by occasional regional and constituency-specific F2F meetings.

  Including on various efforts near and dear to your heart.


There is precious little in ICANN that I would claim near or dear. Given
that my tenure in ALAC's face-to-face meetings witnessed a great many
failures and few successes (applicant support for newGTLDs, a transparent
compliance efforts, public-interest commitments, getting a second At-Large
Board member, and total dismissal of two ALAC white papers among the more
notable failures I can recall) it will be very hard to convince that going
more-virtual can further depress that track record.

I invite you to name a single ALAC policy win -- in which ALAC activity
steered or overturned an existing ICANN path -- that could not have
happened without face-to-face meetings.


>   I certainly noticed the impact on my own efforts these past two years
> without in-person meetings.


ICANN's implementation of virtual meetings sucks and is obsessed with staff
control. If it actually did virtual right, you might not feel so
disadvantaged.

Cheers

- Evan
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