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Dear Maureen,<br>
<br>
thank you for your kind follow-up and explanation. I'll relay the
point made that ICANN decided that the meeting was going to be over
three weeks, as well as Gisella's note that the At-Large week
details will be sent out to the other SO AC Lists.<br>
Kindest regards,<br>
<br>
Olivier<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/10/2021 19:49, Maureen Hilyard
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAGj=WWQ4Bc+PeztTrtfA9moZCeEMMUb8pCxBCrxiGyAdF=CroQ@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="ltr">Hi Olivier and all
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Well that sounds like that was an interesting meeting, and
great to see that what At-Large is doing is being seen as
impacting to some level of importance on other areas of
ICANN. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><b>ICANN decided that the meeting was going to be over
three weeks.</b> The ICANN community is now experiencing its
sixth virtual meeting, and half of the community live outside
of the European and the US time zones. Not surprisingly, ICANN
statistics have shown that the attendance by the other half of
the world has not been great. For At-Large, I wanted to look
at how we could use the ICANN meeting time more effectively to
get more attendance and participation among those members who
have not or could not attend even our own sessions at ICANN
meetings. Naturally, we would welcome participants from other
communities to join into our sessions and hope that they do
not feel disadvantaged by our making use of what is considered
to still be within the ICANN meeting timeframe.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The week in between Prep Week and the ICANN meeting,
despite whatever purpose ICANN originally intended, was
created as the At-Large Week for the convenience of our
community members whom we are encouraging to attend <u>our</u>
sessions at least. It has given us an opportunity to
experiment and do something different that considers our
community of volunteers first, and to look at how it might
impact their participation and attendance. Because they are
real volunteers, many cannot sustain the timeframe of a
full-on ICANN meeting even over four days. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Because of my lone timezone, I myself have found that
trying to stay awake across a block of nearly 10 hours in the
middle of the night to attend irregular sessions has been very
difficult, and more so when I have also had to work during my
daylight hours. It has taken me at least a couple of weeks to
get back to some sort of normality after a meeting. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The At-Large week schedule is being held during what is our
normal At-Large meeting times and at a more manageable load of
two sessions a day. Our sessions do not conflict with other
ICANN community sessions as they normally do when we
participate in an ICANN meeting. At-Large involvement in the
ICANN meeting this time is minimal and enables our members to
attend other community sessions and to learn about what is of
interest to the rest of the ICANN community. Our social media
working group will be doing its best to ensure that other
ICANNN communities are informed of our sessions as well as
those of other communities that might be of interest to
At-Large.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I find it interesting that at a time when ICANN itself is
asking the wider community how they think future meetings will
be held, that some ICANNers are persisting that other
communities must fit their expectations. Fortunately, we have
been given an opportunity to consider what best meets the
needs of our community first. There were no objections made
when it was first raised at the SOAC meeting nor during our
own planning sessions. However, if we find at the end of the
ICANN meeting that it had no real effect then so be it. Back
to the drawing board. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I hope that helps.</div>
<div>Regards</div>
<div>Maureen</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 4:16
AM Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <<a href="mailto:ocl@gih.com"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">ocl@gih.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div> Dear Maureen,<br>
<br>
I am just off a call with UK ICANN Stakeholders, a sort of
an ICANN Read-Out with selected UK based ICANN participants,
and I shared the At-Large Activities, both during the ICANN
week, but also in the so-called "At-Large Week".<br>
Whilst there were congratulatory remarks all about for the
At-Large to convene such interesting sessions, two comments,
from Susan Payne and Chris Disspain questioned the
organising of the "At-Large Week". Susan, in particular,
explained that the ICANN72 organising committee debated at
length how long the ICANN meetign should be, whether it
should be a short meeting or a longer one and the consensus
that was reached across SO/AC/SG was to have a shorter ICANN
week that was 4 days in length. <br>
I explained that for the At-Large Community, 4 days were
impractical as it had to conduct its own business whilst
offering its community the ability to attend plenaries,
official meetings of the Board, public forum etc. So the
At-Large week was primarily organised for At-Large
participants but open to everyone, as in many At-Large
meetings. This did not quite satisfy Susan nor Chris: both
said that the topics and line-ups of these meetings were
very interesting, yet they were not on the public meeting
schedule and it would be interesting if they were, so as for
many more participants to be able to attend them. Chris in
particular mentioned that if members of the ICANN Board were
attending these meetings, they should be part of the overall
ICANN Schedule. But of course, that cannot happen since this
is not technically part of the ICANN meeting.<br>
<br>
So I didn't know what to say. How are the At-Large Week
meetings going to be advertised? Are the At-Large happy to
have anyone attend? How do you respond to those who say that
the At-Large has effectively created, in its policy
sessions, more potential plenary ICANN sessions outside the
ICANN plenary session schedule, as it has invited guests
from across SOs/ACs/SGs etc?<br>
<br>
Kindest regards,<br>
<br>
Olivier<br>
<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.gih.com/ocl.html">http://www.gih.com/ocl.html</a></pre>
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