[NA-Discuss] Summary Minutes NARALO Teleconference

[At-Large Staff]

Dear all,

Darlene Thompson was so kind as to minute today¹s NARALO teleconference. You
can find the summary minutes and the audio file if you follow the link
below. There are also attached to this mail.

https://st.icann.org/naralo/index.cgi?14_july_2008

Regards,

Nick Ashton-Hart, Matthias Langenegger, Frederic Teboul
ICANN At-Large Staff
email: staff at atlarge.icann.org
Minutes of Tele-Conference
July 14, 2008
NARALO Teleconference
 
 
Attending:   Wendy Seltzer, Darlene Thompson, Evan Leibovitch, Alan
Greenburg, Gareth Shearman, Seth Reiss, Frederic Teboul, Dharma Dailey
 
1.    Election Planning
 
Evan¹s and Darlene¹s terms are for one year.  Formal procedures to accept
nominations and for voting procedures need to be adopted. Frederic will be
in charge of this and should have this ready by the end of the week.  Each
ALS gets two votes and so do the unaffiliated individuals.
 
2.    Paris Briefings
 
Some briefings have been posted already (Evan¹s and Wendy¹s) and those can
be read.
 
Alan will be giving his verbally: As ICANN meetings go, this was incredibly
busy and moderately productive.  Decisions were made and things seemed to be
moving. There was a decision on gTLDs, the Summit and on Domain Tasting.
Things were not always decided as we might have wished but things were
definitely moved forward.  The time was *really* crunched so ALAC and the
Liaisons were really run off of their feet.  There were also more meetings
that are cross-constituency that added more hours to the schedule. Feelings
on ALAC:  they still are not making any policy decisions, even those that
were scheduled.  
 
Wendy found it really helpful when people posted policy statements that she
could use but we need to do more.
 
Darlene also found this to be an extremely busy meeting and is disturbed by
the lack of ALAC movement on any post-Paris policy matters.
 
Evan found it to be a good bonding experience between the NARALO and the
EURALO.  Things were able to be agreed upon and joint statements made. The
joint sessions with SSAC, NCUC and GAC were good to put faces to names and
to be able to improve our work with these ones.  This meeting was extremely
compressed with very little time to chat in the hallways.  We have also
started to turn the corner in being able to make policy statements.
 
Alan:  We need to start making conscious decisions on which policies we wish
to weigh in on and which we do not.  We are not doing this yet but need to.
 
 
 
 
 
3.    Travel Policy
 
Soon we will only get half of the funding that ALAC needs and none for At
Large as per what other groups get. We need to either complain and take
action or try to figure out where the money comes from.  This motion has
been passed but is open for comment until the end of the Paris week.  In the
absence of comments, this will go through.  Doug Brent instituted this so
comments should go to him but also to the board.  It doesn¹t seem that ALAC
has been doing anything on this yet.  When Doug Brent put this forward,
there was to be no funding for ALAC.  It¹s the Board that put ALAC back in.
There was no public discussion on this and no opportunity to comment on this
prior to the decision being made.
 
We need to get a NARALO working group together on this, at a minimum.
Gareth and Darlene are willing to work on this and take the lead on this and
to try to bring the rest of the group into this.
 
4.    GNSO Improvements
 
They have had 4-5 meetings on this so far with another few to go.  The
positions that have been put on the table are (in part):  parity between
registries/registrars and the commercial/non-commercial people, the business
constituency wants more seats, etc.  The registrars with their weighted
votes might lose half of their votes which would give more power to the
business constituency.  Who knows what will happen at this point?  Game
theory.  If the committee cannot come to a consensus, the board will make
the decision for them.
 
5.    Public Participation
 
We have deadlines coming up on: updates to the RAA and Presidents public
consultation on improving institutional confidence.  These things are
related to the JPA and to the travel policy.  This may be a good opportunity
to make our case known because of the lack of confidence in ICANN public
participation.  Evan will take the lead on this.
 
Alan is coming to the conclusion that the At-Large structure as it is
organized makes it exceedingly difficult to partake in policy discussions.
Unless we can identify people within the RALOs and ALSs who are versant in
various policy areas, then we will be unable to do so effectively.  We may
never be able to succeed if we do not have these people.  We cannot continue
to try to dumb the issues down and then try to give policy direction that
will be useful to ICANN.
 
Wendy thinks that there ARE some areas where the public may have input that
we could do through polls and such.
 
Darlene mentioned that we also need accountability with our ALAC members.
Who is doing what?  Who is showing up to meetings?  Who is actually
shouldering the work load?
 
Frederic noted that of our 17 ALSs, only 7 replied to the Summit
questionnaire and 5 to the Win-Win questionnaire.  He NEEDS more input.
 
Also, he needs an up-to-date list of contacts for the ALSs.
 
6.    RAA Update
 
We need more information on this and have requested an issues report from
Frederic.  Evan will request more information from Danny, as well.
 
7.     Meeting adjourned  - on time, again!