[NA-Discuss] ALAC Members
Alan Greenberg
alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca
Wed Jun 27 00:47:28 EDT 2007
At 26/06/2007 10:27 PM, Thompson, Darlene wrote:
>Alan,
>
>I am very sorry if you found the tone of this e-mail
>confrontational. I do not apologize for the concerns behind it as I
>stand behind them but I certainly did not want this to be
>confrontational. I even had a couple of my confrers read it over
>beforehand to make sure it wasn't too "in your face" prior to
>hitting send and they thought that it was reasonable. I have no
>personal issues with you personally, just that you step in when you
>haven't even paid attention to what your own region is doing. This,
>I find, is rather irresponsible. I know its a lot of trouble but
>you are living in this region so I think it is rather important.
Darlene, if and when you get to know me, I think you will find that
"irresponsible" is not a description that is often applied to me. As
I previously stated, I quite deliberately stayed out of the
discussion. I periodically looked at the documents that were coming
out of the process, and if I had seen something that troubled me or
where I could have imparted great wisdom to a discussion, I would
have spoken up. I also periodically read NA-RALO mail if the subject
catches my eye. It is not an issue of being "a lot of trouble". I
already average several hours per day on ICANN work plus I am
currently averaging about 4 days per month of travel for ICANN. There
is, unfortunately, a limit to how much e-mail I can process. I pick
what is the most critical. As a 30-year veteran of using e-mail, I am
somewhat pragmatic about what is possible. You don't have to approve
of my methods.
I suggest that we take this discussion off line. Since we happen to
be in the same city at the moment, there are more productive ways of
coming to closure.
Alan
>
>My apologies for causing offence. I was rather cringing from that
>part and almost didn't send it in the first place. Then I thought
>that the issue was too important to shy away from, although that is
>my natural tendancy (believe it or not).
>
>D
>
>
>----------
>From: Alan Greenberg [mailto:alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca]
>Sent: Tue 6/26/2007 4:54 PM
>To: Thompson, Darlene; na-discuss at atlarge-lists.icann.org
>Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] ALAC Members
>
>Darlene and all,
>
>I feel I must comment on this note.
>
>There are indeed three ALAC members from each region. The Bylaws
>call for two to be selected by the RALO (and prior to the RALO's
>existence, be selected by the ICANN Board) and one selected by the
>Nominating Committee. This is similar to the GNSO and the
>ccNSO have which also have voting members selected by the
>Nominating Committee. Conversely, there are five members of the
>Nominating Committee selected by the ALAC. Perhaps some or all of
>this might change following the review of the ALAC, but that is the
>structure at the moment. Regarding why does ICANN have such
>NomCom-selected members, I cannot speak to the intent of those who
>drew up the current Bylaws, but I suspect that at least part of the
>motivation was specifically to have some members who were not
>beholden to special interest groups (be they RALOs in the case of
>the ALAC, or constituencies in the GNSO or ccTLD-managers in the
>case of the ccNSO).
>
>As member of ALAC, selected by the NomCom and coming from North
>America, I have a number of responsibilities. First and foremost, it
>to act in what I believe are the best interests of ICANN and the
>ALAC. Second, is to act in what I believe to be the best interests
>of the North American At-Large community. As I understand it, all of
>these responsibilities are shared with RALO-selected members of the
>ALAC. RALO-selected members also have a direct relationship with
>their RALO. To what extent they must follow the explicit direction
>or intents of their RALO depends on their own conscience, the
>policies and regulations of their RALO, and of course their interest
>in staying in or getting re-appointed to that position.
>
>I consciously and carefully have not gotten involved in the
>formation of the NA-RALO. I felt that this should be left to the
>members of the involved ALSs. For the record, several NA-RALO people
>have told me that they believed that this was a reasonable and
>correct position for me to have taken. Based on this, and other
>demands for my time, I did not read all of the e-mails discussing
>the formation and I therefore was not even aware of the decision
>that you mentioned. I did post my suggested changes to the At-Large
>list on June 16th, and received only one comment from the NA region,
>and it did not cite any decision or discussion, formal or informal,
>related to umbrella organizations (the comment did disagree with my
>recommendation, but not from the viewpoint you mentioned). I made
>this comment (as well as others) based on my best beliefs at the
>time. I would think that this is all you could expect of anyone. Had
>I known of the previous exchanges, I certainly would have made an
>effort to discuss the issue before the earlier ALAC meeting. But no
>one chose to explicitly tell me about it despite my posting my
>thoughts nine days earlier.
>
>For the record, although the intent of the quotation that you cite
>generally agrees with my statement in my June 16th note, the
>quotation was not mine. It was entered into a draft document on the
>fly by the At-Large staff person (a practice that I have repeatedly
>gone on record as opposing).
>
>I am glad that Robert distributed the document to you. Communicating
>with his RALO's ALSs is part of his job, and I am delighted that he
>did so (and I would not expect anything less from a professional of
>his calibre). Based on my current and past experiences with Robert,
>he is no doubt a hard worker, and I assume the same is true with
>Beau. But most of the rest of the ALAC has been working similarly
>hard, and in my case, I started a day earlier with 13 hours of GNSO meetings.
>
>I find the confrontational wording of your note rather troublesome.
>
>Regards, Alan
>
>At 26/06/2007 12:12 PM, Thompson, Darlene wrote:
>>Hi all,
>>
>>I must say, I'm learning a ton of stuff here in San Juan. One of
>>which, is that I had always thought that we had 3 ALAC members
>>representing our region and that is not, in fact, the case. We
>>have two, who we have just elected being Robert and Beau. Alan
>>"has no obligation" (his words) to forward any of our causes.
>>
>>I found this interesting because, some time ago, we had a huge
>>discussion on this list (which I do not mean to re-open) on whether
>>orgs-of-orgs (ICANN calls them "Umbrella Organizations") and their
>>member orgs can apply to become ALSs. We had concensus on this
>>topic, in fact the vast majority gave their consent. At yet, Alan
>>Greenburg actually put in contrary wording to this in the ALAC
>>Proposed Guide to ALS Application Evaluation which would have
>>prevented this, namely (and I quote):
>>
>>"Where an Umbrella Organisation applies and is accepted for
>>membership, its constituent member organizations may not be
>>accredited as ALSes. If members of an Umbrella Organisation are
>>already accredited as ALSes, and they wish to retain their
>>accreditation, the Umbrella Organisation's application would not be approved."
>>
>>We were extremely fortunate to have Robert there as he circulated
>>this document amongst several of us here that would have been
>>negatively impacted by this and arranged to have us speak to the
>>ALAC to have this wording removed.
>>
>>It is also interesting that, up until this time, it was a fairly
>>major responsibility of ALAC to assist in the formation of the five
>>regions. Now it seems that ICANN is revisiting the entire
>>structure. We may wish to discuss how we would like to see this
>>structure work. I am wondering why we only get to select 2 of the
>>3 regional ALAC reps. If the third one is not actually forwarding
>>OUR causes, then what is the point? Why does ICANN reserve the
>>right to select these people if, really, they are not answerable to any group?
>>
>>I must say, we are very fortunate to have both Robert and Beau on
>>the committee. They have been working unbelievably hard already
>>(meetings at 7:30 AM most days, having to stand up and speak
>>although totally new, running like crazy and organizing things).
>>
>>Thank you, Robert and Beau,
>>
>>Darlene
>>_______________________________________________
>>NA-Discuss mailing list
>>NA-Discuss at atlarge-lists.icann.org
>><http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss_atlarge-lists.icann.org>http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss_atlarge-lists.icann.org
>>
>>---
>>Draft MoU with ICANN:
>><http://www.icannwiki.org/NA_RALO_MOU>http://www.icannwiki.org/NA_RALO_MOU
>>
>>Draft Operating Principles:
>><http://www.icannwiki.org/NA_RALO_OP>http://www.icannwiki.org/NA_RALO_OP
>>
>>Draft Code of Conduct:
>><http://www.icannwiki.org/NARALO_Code_of_Conduct>http://www.icannwiki.org/NARALO_Code_of_Conduct
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