[EURO-Discuss] Follow up on today's teleconference

[Roberto Gaetano]

A few comments.

 

Comments on the statements/consultation

I do appreciate the exhaustive report by Olivier, but I have the impression
that we all are not contributing enough to the development of these
statements.

Can we make an effort and comment on the consultations that are currently
open?

 

Participation of ALSes

Would it help to circulate the list of the supposedly unresponsive ALSes?

Oksana already indicated that she would contact a couple of organizations,
maybe we can all help in this direction.

I think that I have heard at some point in time the name of Vittorio. I can
check with him if the absence is due to a contingent situation or a loss of
interest by ISOC Italy.

We can all make a few calls or emails, it would be good to use the GA as a
chance to give new life to our RALO.

 

Participation of individuals

(Disclaimer: I am an individual that does not belong to an ALS, so I may be
in conflict of interest)

I agree that to have one ALS for all loose individuals is a suboptimal
solution. However, can we start from here and secure at least this result?
We can move forward when we have this operational.

I have always supported the importance of participation and ability to speak
over ability to vote. Some other folks disagree. However, while we continue
disagreeing on the need to revise the voting mechanism, can we agree on
going forward with the "generic ALS" proposal that is on the table?

 

Travel to Lisbon and invitation of guest speakers

Following up to the discussion on the chat about Olivier participating to
the EURALO GA, while I could share the astonishment of Oksana about the ALAC
Chair not been funded for the trip, I have to admit that the rules are
fairly clear: only delegates from the ALSes will be funded. This is
connected to the participation of guest speakers: this requires additional
funding.

The problem arises exclusively from the fact that we chose to have the GA as
a separate venue from an ICANN meeting. We discussed this in the past, I am
not criticizing the choice of privileging an event that would give us more
possibility of outreach like EuroDIG, I am only noting that this advantage
has also a drawback. On one hand we can contact people that would not
participate to an ICANN meeting, and do outreach. On the other hand, we have
difficulties (or additional costs) for having people that would have been
available without problems at an ICANN meeting.

Incidentally, as I commented on the chat, Francisco da Silva, TLG Liaison to
the ICANN Board, is based in Lisbon. Besides having another Board member as
keynote speaker, we could invite Francisco as well, at zero cost, and maybe
dedicate some time of our AGM to the communication between ALAC and the
technical community, of which the TLG is a component.

 

ICANN Regions

The main reason why ICANN has regions is for Board elections. And the ICANN
Board will never use an arbitrary designation of regions, to avoid problems.
So, it will stick as much as possible with the UN Statistics definition,
with minor adjustments only in the case of some powerful voice yelling loud.
If this happens, we find ourselves with things like some Pacific Islands
being in Europe.

This said, other components of the ICANN community have some flexibility. In
the chat we discussed the status of Armenia. Well, if you go to the site of
the Armenian NIC (https://www.amnic.net/) you see that it is a member of
RIPE (as Armenian addressing organization) and a member of CENTR (as
Armenian TLD). Why cannot ALAC have the same flexibility in the allocation
of an ALS to a RALO? This is a fight worth fighting, IMHO.

Of course, there are limitations. If you look carefully at the ccNSO and
ASO, you discover that the composition of the Councils and the election of
the ICANN Board members do indeed respect rigorously the geographical
distribution. Moreover, the ccNSO site shows the national ccTLD members as
belonging to the ICANN Region (see
http://ccnso.icann.org/about/members.htm), even if then they have the
flexibility to join a regional organization that is not the one to which
they belong geographically.

I have always insisted on the fact that we have great potential for outreach
and collaboration with ccTLDs: the regional organization is one example
where this communication can be extremely useful.

 

As a side note, I will most probably be in the Caucasus area around the
second half of May, I will be ready to spend some time in visiting the ALSes
and ccTLDs in the region. I believe we have an ALS in Armenia and one in
Azerbaijan, but none in Georgia.

Cheers,

Roberto