[At-Large] (not really about) Travel Funding

[JFC Morfin]

Dear Professor Hong Xue,

I chair france at large which happens to be the oldest ALS (it was 
created by the French @large candidates to the only ICANN @large 
election in 2000).

With other @larges, members of the largest ever self organised 
bottom-up ICANN community (icannatlarge.org), I incporated the 
ATLARGE organisation. We did not really activate it, not to confuse 
the parallel effort which permitted some other members to force their 
way into ICANN and create the ALAC. Last year france at large decided to 
join the ALAC to better welcome ICANN to its Paris meeting.

Guess what? We were denied.

Guess what? We were not surprised as we are interested in doing 
rather than in speaking (it seemed to worry ICANN?).

Guess what? It helped us not to waste time with ICANN and work on 
issues of higher common interest.

Our vision is that @larges actually are the Internet lead users. This 
means the users who have the technical, poltical, intellectual 
capacity to adapt the Internet to their needs; and this way to the 
needs of the other people. We adhere to the IAB RFC 3869 analysis 
that the internet is in a bad shape if it is only sponsored  by 
merchants (we see it). We adhere to the WSIS vision of a people 
centered information society. We would love ICANN if was the 
secretariat of our common development. We are not really interested 
in what in became. We see what FLOSS did with computer software, and 
we suppose @larges can do it too at the network brainware level 
(organizing a better use together).

For years our france at large priority was multilinguistics (understood 
as the cybernics of linguistic diversity). How to build a network system that:

- (1) permits the existing 25.000 linguistic entities, and the 7 
billions idiolects to use it with the same efficiency
- (2) and due to that capacity, permits to 7 billions people to use 
their indivudal global internet the way they need and want it.

For years, ICANN, NCUC and others prevented us from participating to 
their IDN related "work". So, we joined the IETF, created an @large 
"internet users contributing group" (IUCG) (http://iucg.org) in order 
to moderate the IETF linguistic policy and make possible a 
non-English biased and smart internet. Actually we need it to support 
the Semantic Internet we are interested in: the Intersem, the 
internet of thoughts - at brain to brain interintelligibility layers. 
Because we cannot leave it to merchants.

Today, Vint Cerf, Chair of the WG/IDNABIS submitted the WG's produced 
documents over a long work of two years. The proposed solution is 
still "IETF English" language centric. However, different people 
contributed from different cultures. They helped us to smooth the 
"IETF technical Imperialism" (:-)) so much that I was able to just 
post an @large IETF Draft 
http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-iucg-punyplus-00.txt that (totally 
transparently to our everyday Internet) gives everyone exactly what 
we want at the DNS level. Now, we have to find a few developping 
teams to write prototypes in different environments and test them as 
IETF tests towards standardisation.

On-line common @large work is not only made of the waste of time you 
suffer from. We wait for the end of next week, to know about the JPA 
renewal. Then we will decide if really new ICANN is possible or we 
must reactivate ATLARGE (http://atlarge.org) and call for help (not 
for committees, rules, Nomcoms, etc).

Best.
jfc


At 03:37 27/09/2009, Hong Xue wrote:
>It is even more difficult for Asians to take apart in the "list
>discussion", not only because we are sky of our "plain English" or we
>are not skin-thickety for such virtual tomato-fight, but we acutely
>feel that we are not accepted by the main stream here. The messages we
>took time to write and post were most probably un-responded,
>overlooked or (susceptibly) trashed. Our views are not heard and not
>taken into account. Our voices echo in the sound of silence. I'm not
>going to use any concrete example to upset anyone for I believe in
>Confucianism, which mandates tolerance as the core value. But I do
>hope the cultural environment could change and become friendly to the
>participants for any part of the world.
>
>  --
>Hong Xue, Ph.D.
>Professor of Law
>Director of Institute for the Internet Policy & Law
>Beijing Normal University
>19 Xin Jie Kou Wai Street
>Beijing 100875 China
>
>
>
>
>
>On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 5:33 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org> wrote:
> > Karl Auerbach wrote:
> >
> >> I too do not understand why most of the discussion that occurs on this
> >> mailing list come from North America and Europe.
> > It is not surprising that so many Americans within ICANN just don't
> > grasp what they're dealing with in attempts to empower the global user
> > community. What comes naturally to ICANN old-timers (mostly Europeans
> > and North Americans)  is, literally, quite foreign to the very people
> > ICANN is trying to attract.
> >
> > As Danny time after time after time rails against the perceived lack of
> > communications between ALS and RALO, or between ALS and ALS members, he
> > shows total ignorance of what could be a cultural deference to
> > leadership, or a difficulty to translate complex technical concepts well
> > beyond ICANN's official list of languages. There is a significant number
> > of people in the global community who find the direct and often personal
> > tone of email used by .... well, Europeans and North Americans ... to be
> > at worst highly offensive and at least highly intimidating. Many refuse
> > to take their first steps into our forums, knowing that if they say the
> > "wrong" thing they'll be at the receiving end of a nastygram the likes
> > of which are miles beyond the kind of discourse they're ready to have.
> >
> > There's an assumption in the kinds of posts that Danny, Milton and Robyn
> > (and many others, including myself on occasion) have been making, that
> > the audience for these messages have thick virtual skins and are
> > supposed to appreciate direct (to the point of crude) speech.
> >
> > That assumption is a mistake, which I believe is directly attributable
> > for the limits on the discussion you see.
> >
> > Not every culture empowers individuals or encourages free thought (let
> > alone free speech).
> > In some cultures politeness and respect is the norm, and rudeness is
> > just shunned as vulgar and/or uneducated.
> > Not all NGOs operate in the communications style of what is generally
> > known as "civil society" (which more often than not is quite uncivil).
> > And ... guess what ... some people, and some cultures, simply
> > communicate better face to face, where eye contact and tone of voice
> > matter ... just imagine!!
> >
> > What this means, of course, is that those who bemoan the lack of
> > participation actually help to cause it by belittling those who are
> > already here.
> > They complain that the system is useless as they actively work to _make_
> > it useless. Moaning incessantly about what hasn't been done but
> > withholding even faint praise for what has been done.
> > "No good deed goes unpunished" and all that...
> >
> > But it's not just At-Large's own self-destructive elements. There is
> > also much .. for lack of a better term .. "cultural imperialism" reeking
> > from the way ICANN itself does things. Hasn't it ever bothered anyone
> > that, despite all the exotic locales ICANN meets in, it never lifts a
> > finger to assist local RALOs to engage in ALS recruitment at these
> > meetings? Does it not bother anyone that there's not a single ALS from
> > Russia? Are the existing volunteers supposed to burn their own cash to
> > make this happen?
> >
> > The At-Large Community, for all its newly-perceived maturity, is still
> > treated as an incapable offspring. ICANN still distrusts the grassroots
> > enough to require that one-third of ALAC must be parachuted in. (During
> > the ALAC Review there were proposals to *increase* proportion of
> > unelected reps, but never did I see any proposals to make ALAC
> > all-elected taken seriously.) ALAC has _zero_ discretionary spending of
> > its own, every dollar it gets -- whether for travel or outreach or
> > research -- is accomplished through a process that's effectively just
> > refined begging. When ICANN adds staff on our behalf it doesn't ask what
> > *we* need staff to help with, those decisions are made on our behalf.
> > And don't even get me started on translation policies.
> >
> > If you want to dig even deeper, let's not forget the basic difficulties
> > presented by ICANN's schizophrenic public-involvement face... if someone
> > from the "public" wants to get involved and doesn't know anything about
> > ICANN do they enter through At-Large, NCUC, or Kieren's office? The
> > lines and reasons that distinguish one from the others are vague and
> > confusing, especially to those not yet versed in ICANN culture. For
> > anyone with difficulty in English, forget it.
> >
> > But dealing with ICANN's cultural impediments is a different and
> > longer-term issue. Being more welcoming is something we can do for
> > ourselves.
> >
> >> 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.
> >
> > I was saddened to read the exchange on "civility" being held over at the
> > Ombudsman's blog (https://omblog.icann.org/?p=192). On one side are
> > Frank and Kieren arguing that codes of conduct must be more strictly
> > applied; on the other Milton, Robyn and Avri assert that arbitrary
> > bounds of civil behaviour are unfair and stifle expression.
> >
> > Neither side has it right. Treating this as a regulatory matter (i.e.,
> > codes of conduct) only encourages disobedience from those who already
> > see themselves as repressed. And those who defend the right to be
> > abusive just don't get that their style is severely *narrowing* their
> > intended audience.
> >
> > People need to realize that being civil and positive in ICANN-related
> > conversation isn't just a good idea because of codes of conduct. Being
> > civil, polite and positive is an act of inclusion and welcoming. Maybe
> > it is more difficult to make a polite and assertive ALAC argument, just
> > as it's harder to tell a good clean joke. But the effort is not just
> > worthwhile, it's critical.
> >
> > Being "mad as hell [...]" may work personally for some, and I'll agree
> > that in some circumstances it may even be the preferred style to enact
> > change. But not everyone works that way, or -- more importantly -- is
> > willing to work with those who work that way. Is your insistence on a
> > certain style worth alienating scores of others who may -- to you -- be
> > too meek or slow to act, but each deserve as much of a seat at the table
> > as you?
> >
> > - Evan
> >
> > Disclaimer: As a white male North American, I am likely not the best
> > observer of cultural imperialism on this list. But, as someone who has
> > had the fortune to travel extensively (pre-ICANN) and handle
> > negotiations in many different locales, I hope my perspective may 
> be useful.
> >
> >
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> >
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