[NA-Discuss] Letter to the Board

[Evan Leibovitch]

Evan Leibovitch wrote:
>
> [ my comments are limited -- for now -- to the NARALO list, pending
> feedback ]

Not a single reply or comment in days?

Is this -- Danny's proposed letter -- something that should be on the
agenda of next week's conference call?

- Evan


>
>
> Danny Younger wrote:
>
> > I am of the view that the ALAC needs to write a very strong letter
> > to the Board expressing their disgust with (1) the manner in which
> > the ICANN Public Forum session was conducted that allowed for a
> > very limited amount of time within which to interact with the Board
> >  and (2) the almost total lack of remote participation
> > opportunities that were available to at-large members.
>
> Hi Danny,
>
> I found myself fairly disgusted with the highly stage-managed nature
> of the Public Forum. However this is not the first of its kind, the
> Paris meeting was also similarly controlled.
>
> > As someone that attempted to participate remotely, I can't point to
> >  a single ALAC session that allowed for meaningful remote
> > participation, nor were audio feeds available for many workshops.
>
> I must have picked up a bug on the plane coming home as I'm feeling
> quite unwell right now. I will have a full debrief once I'm up to it.
> But I'll reply to your comment because I generally agree with it.
>
> Danny, to me it felt like there was a significant chunk of the ALAC
> calendar in Cairo that didn't allow for meaningful participation by
> those of us who were _there_, and I don't just mean the open forum.
> Often we spent so much time patting ourselves on the backs for merely
> getting multiple constitiencies together in the same room, we spent
> near zero time actually churning policy. The "Open Joint Sessions"
> Monday afternoon and Thursday morning were particularly pointless and
> I will advocate scrapping them in the future in favour of more
> concrete policy-driven activity. More than 90 minutes of the "Open
> Forum" was spent reading prepared written AC and SO reports out loud.
> And the utter rudeness with which the Bruens (of Knujon) were treated
> was simply an embarrassment, they are owed an apology.
>
> It got to the point that ALAC never got around to implementing its
> extra measures on accountability -- the staff-proposed changes to the
> ALAC rules that would (IMO) micro-manage participation tracking.
> Having said that, I consider the non-approval of these ridiculous
> measures to be a Good Thing (a discussion for a later time). However,
> the dropping of this measure on the floor was indicative of how little
> of substance really got done. If it hadn't been for Nick's background
> info on new gTLDs and the substantial grunt work on the summit -- much
> done away from the formal meetings by Wolf and Darlene and me -- I
> would have considered the week a massively wasted opportunity.
>
> > This has to be the worst case of both in-person and remote
> > participation management that I have ever seen at an ICANN session.
>
>
> I would agree, for reasons that have nothing to do with technical
> barriers. But I think that at least part of the problem with
> participation lies closer to home. So long as ALAC sees merit in
> bloated action-free multi-stakeholder meetings -- in which applauding
> the mere ability to bring everyone together in the same room appears
> to be the overriding agenda item -- we have little moral high ground
> from which to lecture others.
>
> I would like to get the points of view of Darlene, Robert, Wendy and
> Beau on this before talking my concerns to ALAC and maybe beyond.
>
> - Evan
>
>
> PS: In retrospect, Robert's attempt to engage the local Cairo
> community ended up -- to me -- to be an utter failure and a
> unproductive diversion. As it turned out, the "community" that Robert
> found didn't want to participate in ICANN so much as exploit us as a
> vehicle for self-promotion. I've learned my lesson and will personally
> not indulge such activity again, even (maybe especially) at the Summit.
>

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