[NA-Discuss] Seeking Regional Advice for a New ALS

[Evan Leibovitch]

On 13 February 2016 at 21:57, Judith Hellerstein <judith at jhellerstein.com>
wrote:


> So going forward we want to make sure that the ALS we accept will be an
> active member.
>
​
​
​Sorry, but going forward such investigation is a complete waste of time
​ and doomed to failure​
.

By virtue of its application, the organization has indicated interest and
answered the questions asked. Beyond that you can't read their minds or
anticipate changes in leadership in the future that may shift more or less
attention away from ICANN issues.

Everyone would naturally like active ALSs to help share the workload, but
​you should resist ​
anything beyond:


"Here are our minimum criteria for ALSs. Of course we would love for you to
contribute more, but we require at least [....]. Are you able to commit to
this?"


That's a yes/no question, to be answered to the best abilities of current
leadership. Anything beyond that is unacceptable level of prying. Remember,
one of the main points behind getting ALSs involved (as opposed to, say,
members of NCUC) is that we are encouraging orgs that don't necessarily
have Internet governance as a primary focus. So we should be applauding
their very interest, regardless of whether or not they will be actively
involved.

The issue of keeping a current contact list is a challenge for any
organization, frankly I think that's the role of staff rather than
volunteers. It can be easily automated, and the scale of doing it globally
for all regions makes the available tools quite cost effective. ICANN
depends so much on volunteers that I'm stunned it doesn't have an
organization-wide set of tools for this.


> ISOC-DC is just the first ALS on this new procedure.  Nothing having to do
> with them, just that they are the first one where we are taking a deeper
> dive in.
>

​Please stop such "deep dives". This practice will not help, and it has
immense capacity to undo the good of outreach being done.

​The ability to participate in ICANN is not such a prize that we have the
luxury to be so demanding of newcomers. For ALSs, the demands are many and
the rewards few -- we need them more than they need us.​ I remind that any
group in the world can submit public comment directly to ICANN, they don't
need us as a conduit. There needs to be a special reason why to participate
through At-Large, and communicating this reason is the role of outreach.
You don't want to undo that through needlessly invasive entry procedures.

​The amount of time that At-Large expends examining itself -- compared to
the amount of time spent actually affecting ICANN -- has always been a
source of astonishment to me. As it continues to be.
​
- Evan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/na-discuss/attachments/20160214/b92524bb/attachment.html>