[NA-Discuss] [At-Large] Public Board Meeting - the Update for Prague

Fri May 4 16:26:27 UTC 2012

Agreed on all points except one.

I take the position that the TAS outage is only a "disaster" from the
vantage point of the domain industry, and am generally unconcerned myself.
While delays will have a small trickle-down effect on people whose
communities (think they) badly need a TLD, in my opinion the overall actual
effect on the general public is negligible. There isn't even much of a
credibility hit, given that the day to day Internet functions as if nothing
happened. Maybe there's diminished public confidence in ICANN's ability to
scale up the number of TLDs so dramatically, but I would suggest that such
confidence was never high in the first place. And since -- as I have been
asserting all along -- there is no end-user demand driving the TLD
expansion, end users really don't care if the process if interrupted, let
alone why.

IMO the domain industry will do a fine job yelling at ICANN for the TAS
mess -- it is a mess, certainly -- and I wouldn't be surprised to see
lawsuits. However, our priorities are different and I would suggest that
other matters -- such as registrant rights in the RAA, conflict of
interest, a goal of 100% WHOIS compliance and REAL consumer metrics (not
the self-serving mush now being churned) -- matter more to At-Large and
should dominate our time with the Board.

I like the shareholder analogy. But of course, for it to stand up, the
Board would need to acknowledge our effect far better than it does. In its
decision to keep the status quo on the Red Cross/Olympic names -- an issue
in which the Board essentially agreed with our position completely -- the
Board simply made references to the public comments. The message sent to
the community is that, as far as the Board is concerned (at least
publicly), ALAC is Just Another Public Comment. In private a number of
Board are eager to tell us how well we're doing, but it *still* has yet to
explicitly acknowledge specific ALAC policy contribution in any reliable
way (and in the way that the Bylaws mandates for the GAC). Public
recognition of our role in specific issues would go a long way in both
morale and outreach.

Maybe that's an issue to take up as well. But that's process, not policy.

- Evan

On 4 May 2012 11:12, Beau Brendler <beaubrendler at earthlink.net> wrote:

> I believe it was discussed and decided fairly quickly last week. It's
> funny, I find myself without much to say about it, because for at least
> three years now ICANN has not funded me to stay for Friday's meetings, so I
> have not attended one. I don't think they are doing away with the public
> forum, however. Though I know I am in the minority here, I find that to be
> a waste of time as well.
>
> What I have occasionally found helpful are the interactions between the
> board and the at-large group at the three annual meetings -- sometimes it's
> a breakfast, sometimes it's a lunch. On a few occasions it has provided an
> opportunity to grill board members on problematic topics.
>
> However, last time, I found the interaction to be predictably scripted. We
> spent the time talking about cross-functional teams or some sort of useless
> topic. If this public board meeting is going to go away, then what should
> happen -- since the at-large is supposed to represent the public interest
> -- is that the at-large should tell the board what it wants to discuss in
> its meeting, and it should follow up on each statement ALAC has made since
> the last meeting to determine what the board has or has not done about it.
>
> For instance, in Prague, I suggest the at-large demand a full accounting
> of the TAS disaster. I suggest the at-large demand a full accounting of the
> board conflict-of-interest problems. I suggest the at-large demand a full
> accounting of what's being done to address the IANA contract issue. Not be
> shown some pre-scripted video, but have an actual interaction that's not
> phony. And it all needs to go on the public record.
>
> The at-large needs to take on a role similar to that of a major
> shareholder in a public for-profit company. Executive behavior should be
> its business; failure to execute should be its business. ALAC needs to be
> more outside the process looking in, not submerged in process issues that
> are essentially meaningless to the general public. If we are arguing to
> hold on to a meeting so that we can parse the body language of
> participants, then the entire philosophy of public interaction with the
> board needs to be re-thought.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: Eduardo Diaz <eduardodiazrivera at gmail.com>
> >Sent: May 4, 2012 8:19 AM
> >To: Bret Fausett <bfausett at internet.law.pro>
> >Cc: NA Discuss <na-discuss at atlarge-lists.icann.org>
> >Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] [At-Large] Public Board Meeting - the Update
> for     Prague
> >
> >When and how was this announced?
> >
> >-ed
> >
> >On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 1:23 AM, Bret Fausett <bfausett at internet.law.pro
> >wrote:
> >
> >> I am very troubled by the decision to remove the public meeting. As I
> see
> >> it, this presents several issues for the community:
> >>
> >> 1) The Board meeting typically closes a cycle of community discussion
> with
> >> a vote/resolution on some issue, and these end-of-meeting Board
> resolutions
> >> are important. The deadline of closing an issue at a public meeting also
> >> keeps the Board on track. Do they still intend to meet and close issues?
> >> This needs to happen.
> >>
> >> 2) The public meetings became a bit of orchestrated theater over the
> >> years, but I still believe they served the purpose of showing the
> Board's
> >> professionalism in addressing and resolving difficult issues. Last
> June's
> >> meeting on New TLDs is the most recent example of this. Take a look at
> this
> >> picture from Singapore that ICANN features on its website:
> >> http://www.icann.org/en/about That's worth a thousand words. Note the
> >> people in the foreground using their camera phones to capture the
> moment.
> >> We're losing that.
> >>
> >> 3) Closing the monthly meetings while leaving these end-of-session
> >> meetings open was something of a compromise reached between a prior
> Board
> >> and the ICANN community many years ago. I am concerned that the Board
> >> decided to change the status quo without any notice and comment.
> >>
> >> 4) As always, ICANN is under scrutiny with the IANA bid still to be
> >> resolved and issues of transparency at the forefront of some of those
> >> discussions. The way this was handled (was there a Board resolution?
> >> Chair's decision?) only makes the optics worse. I can't seem to find any
> >> background on how this decision was made, or why it was made.
> >>
> >>       Bret
> >> ------
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> >>
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> >>
> >
> >
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-- 
Evan Leibovitch
Toronto Canada

Em: evan at telly dot org
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