[At-Large] Travel Funding

[Karl Auerbach]

On 09/25/2009 05:22 AM, Danny Younger wrote:
> It has been about a month since the ICANN Board announced that the
> At-Large Community will be permitted to appoint a director to the
> Board,
...
> The whole process is a sham and always has been.

There are a couple of ways to look at it.

One is that we, the community of internet users, were promised a 
controlling set of seats on ICANN's board of directors as part of the 
initial promises of ICANN when it was being created.  Although this is 
the foundation for my approach, it is an approach that generates fear 
and thus resistance by those who either oppose public participation or 
who fear fast change.

Then there is the incremental method.  Huge granite slabs in Yosemite 
are split from the cliffs by the year-by-year action of water freezing 
into ice in the cracks - big change accomplished a tiny, almost 
imperceptible, bit at a time.

In our ALAC review working group we to a mid-ground, but one towards the 
incremental end, by recommending two fully empowered and voting 
directors.  ICANN's board reduced that to one.

That one is a worthy goal.

It's not a sham.

I too do not understand why most of the discussion that occurs on this 
mailing list come from North America and Europe.

It may well be that other areas and other people are aggregating, 
discussing, debating, and acting outside of the A-R-A (ALAC-RALO-ALS) 
mechanism.  I would not find that surprising.

		--karl--