[EURO-Discuss] Some comments

[Vittorio Bertola]

All,

I have been abroad for the last few days, and I have been trying for a 
while to find the time to draw some personal conclusions from the last 
days of discussions, before we actually get to the vote.

I am somewhat concerned by how difficult it is for many people on the 
list to work together. I have been knowing most of the people in this 
group for many years now, and I know that, while they might differ in 
background, attitudes and views of the world, they are all very capable 
and brilliant. It is known that election time is never a good time to 
build consensus, but I really hope that, over time, we can build better 
reciprocal understanding, and remove this sense of "we against them" 
which makes it difficult to advance things.

I was the one first proposing that we could adopt appointments by 
consensus, as other Regions did. I really believed that we could have 
reached agreement, but it turned out that there was little desire to do 
so, possibly as a consequence of the fact that different people have 
different concepts of diversity and balance, so what seemed balanced to 
me did not seem so to others. There's nothing bad in going to votes to 
solve these difference, but I urge everyone not to see these elections, 
however they go, in terms of "someone wins and someone loses".

Personally, I have been working voluntarily for years to build this 
thing, viewing it as a huge online space for dialogue that could create 
connections among organizations so diverse - in many terms, such as 
internal culture, geography, objectives etc - that value and new 
brilliant ideas could arise from this melting pot. We live in a society 
where all cultures come in touch the one with the other, and learning to 
live together with new cultures is one of the top problems for many 
European countries. I really expect that we will enroll several more 
organizations in the future; this will require effort both in reaching 
out to them and in accommodating their views, but this effort will be 
rewarded by the incredible energy and progress that stems from networks 
when they grow. This is why, by the way, I want to continue being 
involved in the EURALO process, and I decided to put forward my name for 
the Board. It would be a pity if this became a small playground for a 
few known faces that have been involved in ICANN since its beginnings; 
we have to be open and inclusive and encourage many new faces to come on 
board.

I also found many constructive messages on the list, and I really hope 
that, past the elections, we can start working together on actual policy 
objectives. I'm looking forward to that moment!

Ciao,
-- 
vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
-------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------