[NA-Discuss] Out of the Loop

[Evan Leibovitch]

Hello all,

As you may have noticed, I've been away from email and Skype for much of
the last few days. As it was, the mental effort required to follow the
multiple shell games going on regarding the recent GNSO document became
a bit much. After a few days to ponder, and still not quite all there, I
still find myself presented with a number of quandries regarding this
whole multiple-issue mess.


1) So long as one-third of its members are un-representative delegates,
parachuted in by ICANN, the ALAC _must_ _never_ assume that its working
groups are fully representative of -- or responsible to -- the community
at large. Alan said it "wasn't his place" to share early drafts of the
GNSO document with the community ... if not him, then who? Striving for
geographical diversity within subgroups is obviously pointless if
regional "members" are unaccountable to their regions.

As a result of this I feel it is the obligation of ALAC Staff to keep
the community informed of what is going on, which includes what their
"representatives" are doing on their behalf. We may not be able to hold
our regional NomComm rep responsible for their actions, however ALAC as
a whole *is* responsible -- and in the case of the GNSO documents -- has
severely let down its community. I request from ALAC and ALAC-supporting
staff a response regarding how such utter breakdowns will be avoided in
the future.

1a) Given that ALAC has existed since 2002 (or maybe earlier), it amazes
me how many fundamental errors such as this have not been detected and
addressed earlier. It's hard to avoid a conclusion that, until now, ALAC
has done so little of value that such levels of scrutiny have rarely
been applied before.


2) Again, ALAC finds itself at having to react to the frames of
reference determined by someone else as opposed to providing its own
vision and initiative. Why do we keep finiding ourselves in this
situation? Rather than determining our own goals, why are we forever --
on major issues of substance -- going deadline to deadline?

There recent exchange between Danny and Beau, which identified four
general components of GNSO, illustrates the kind of conversation should
be ongoing. (I personally don't believe that each of the four ought to
have an equal stake, but then that's up for dicussion and a what was
said is a great starting point.) Having ongoing awareness of these
issues makes it easy to respond to the agendas of others without having
to always use their frames of reference.


3) Where are we now wrt the GNSO documents? Is it possible for Danny or
Wendy or Beau and/or some others to re-draft the ALAC position on GNSO
reform? Have we painted ourselves into a corner in the joint statement,
precluding us from coming to different conclusions than it reached? Is
it OK for the ALAC position and its "endorsed"  joint statement to be
contradictory?

As Beau said, we should not be coming across as whiners. The joint
process itself did not fail ALAC, our own inside portion of it did
because if our members' unaccountability. So what are we going to do
about it? If the joint statement is etched in stone and contains or
ignores issues which are critical, I still do not have objections to
issuing a statement of detachment. But if we do so, we need to provide
an alternate vision, one that illustrates that perhaps the original
tri-party frames of reference were too limiting in vision. DO we have
people here with the skill and time to do so?




Sorry for the rant. It's just that, after a big flurry of activity,
there's been not much here, and the issues are very significant.
Protesting is far easier than suggesting alternatives. Have we defined
what are protesting? Have we produced an alternative?

I'm sorry that I'm not more involved but it is draining me just to write
this rambling plea. The issue(s) right now are all unresolved -- we have
neither protested NOR re-crafted a position with ALAC NOR addressed the
NomComm unaccountability issue.

We need to re-engage, at many levels.

- Evan