ALAC:Meeting Notes/2006.06.25 Marrakech RALO Workshop

Marrakesh Schedule & Session Notes > ALAC#Marrakesh_Schedule_and_Notes > MOR2006 06 25 ALAC RALO Workshop

Discussion on ALAC/RALO-working structures and RALO-bylaws which serve Internet users best to participate and have an impact on ICANN policies

ALAC Communication has some very good notes from this session. Please add your other notes to this page as well.

Perhaps we should move the notes from ALAC Communication here?

DRAFT NOTES ALAC RALO Working Meeting Sunday June 25, 2006 Attending: Annette, Roberto, Erick, John L, JP, Hong, Vittorio, Pierre, Siavash, Jacqueline, Izumi

Annette introduced herself and expressed sympathy for Peter Dengate Thrush on the tragic loss of his family members.

Annette said the point of RALOs is that we want to strengthen the bottom-up structure and get individual users involved in ICANN policy and also strengthen the user voice in the regions themselves.

Finding the best structure in which to work is problematic. Annette explained the structure of ALAC and how there are three representatives for each region—and it is a challenge with all the different languages in the regions for only a few people to try to represent the region’s end users..

Annette asked everyone present to introduce himself/herself. Then she asked for regional reports and asked what has been happening in the regions since Wellington.

Pierre started with the African report. He said that in 2005, at a meeting in Acra, close to 20 organization expressed interest in forming a RALO. One challenge of course is language differences. Another is demonstrating to our organizations what they will be gaining by becoming an ALS—many are already part of their ISOC chapter. Another issue is critical mass—the same people are playing many different roles in the region.

We had quite a successful workshop in Ghana but momentum is being lost—question is why--what is happening? The internet is still there, maybe the challenges are too great, we don’t know. Financial constraints may also be a barrier.

Latin America

Erick — Re language issues and translations- It is not that necessary in LA as people who speak Spanish can often understand Portuguese and vice versa, but when we expand to the Caribbean with the other 4 languages, it is more difficult and that is why we need to really focus on the language issue.

Robert Guerra - Though Spanish is a key language in the region. Let's not forget about Brazil where they speak portuguest, and the Carribean countries that speak english and French

Jacqueline A. Morris - I have edited the notes above re Erick to reflect more accurately the notes that I took at the meeting. I would like to note, however, that in the Caribbean, we speak English, French, Dutch, Kreyol and Spanish, not just English and French.

There are two meetings being planned—one in Caribbean and one in Lima. Many of the accredited ALS’s in LAC are lawyers involved in computer law.

North America John reported that there are now 7 accredited ALS’s in NA region, some in Canada and some in the US. John did a presentation recently in Canada at a workshop set up by Jacob Malthouse. Still, there is difficulty in getting interest so far. Jean said that since Wellington she has sent out 12 “Dear Colleague “ letters and brochures to organizations like the Parent Teacher Association, the American Library Association, and others. She also did a presentation to a computer user group.

Robert Guerra : i'm sadded that much wasn't mentioned on the icann/alac consultation we had here. It was a good first meeting. Most of the participants did not have much knowledge of ICANN, however they are very involved in telecom policy issues in Canada. The meeting yielded a committment from the participants to have two follow-up meetings, one in Montreal in sept, and ottawa in oct (coinciding with a major civil society telecom policy review meeting.

Asia Pacific Hong and Siavash reported on this (Izumi had not yet arrived). APRALO progress is underway, they are now up to Version 5 of the bylaws, although they are now called “operating principles.”

Some of the problems are—geographic distance—10 time zones-- lots of languages and language families—different political systems….There are a dozen or so ALS’s --all but one are from the Pacific area. There is a real challenge of getting to the individual users in countries where the individual is not really allowed to participate—sometimes even icannwiki is not able to be viewed. Once we get a real operating plan—there is another challenge: any RALO has to sign a MOU with ICANN—lots of inherent problems—where will site be incorporated? If in a place where economic sanctions from the US will not allow a CA corporation to participate, what to do

Hong said obstacles are a problem, but sees also strengths—she sees that the APRALO will definitely be created—14 applications, 11 certified. 3 still in Due diligence. Meeting in Hong Kong with cctld managers—interested in regional managers, working with local internet managers in their countries. Interested in IDN and whois.

Europe Annette reported on the First prep meeting for forming the EURALO occurred at the end of May in Frankfurt. Many German civil rights, data security, etc are now accredited. Region is just very wide—25 EU members—different languages, different political systems, and different privacy protection laws. The power in coming together is to better address our regional Internet regulatory agencies and also to feed in knowledge to ICANN and hopefully have an impact on ICANN policies. What is the impact ALAC have now—we don’t elect board seats now—there is a big fear of creating another bureaucratic layer—or we end up with another GAC.

Preventing monopolies, insuring privacy, consumer protection—these are among the issues people wanted to focus on—also key issues on bylaws – also we wanted to have individuals as members and of course this is not something we are doing yet.

Difficult to really have a very efficient structure right now—we have a roadmap and want to finalize our bylaws by September and we hope to have it created by Nov Athens IGF meeting.

To summarize, Annette said there are reasons that there are no RALOs in place—does it make sense to do it any other way—something more light weight? Not bylaws but operating principles—a way to make it any lighter—not to set itself up for problems like the GAC has but to concentrate on the working structures.

Wolfgang Kleinwaechter—This is a great step to catch us all up on what’s going on in the regions—bylaws were created in response to the direct voting process, which didn’t work—it is no doubt a very bureaucratic process with the ALS and RALO structure—idea was to not keep users at the edges. But meanwhile thanks to the efforts of the movers and shakers in the community, the current Board is more engaged in the end user community—also with the WSIS process etc—and thus the opportunities with the ALAC are better than ever—but it sounds as if we stick to the bylaws then we have tremendous problems to look forward to-- You should talk with the Board about change in the bylaws or at least flexible interpretation of the bylaws—lightweight is a good idea. Next point—don’t harmonize approach in the 5 regions—can’t force the same approach everywhere. Milestones, timetable, control mechanism—one person in place to say ok we have decided to do a regional seminar, or whatever—very concrete workplan, discussion at local events, then discussion will remain on a very high level and not get bogged down in administrivia. In each region discuss a workplan and series of events, in NA, we are still moving forward arguing that we represent the Internet community at large but we have very few “users’ involved.

Insofar it is important to accept that we have to start small but create a critical mass to attract the big players. Start small, move fast, create a certain attraction so that others will join.

Roberto asked for longer term plans from ICANN staff, more support, more flexibility even if practical things like processing reimbursements, getting visas, etc, this is one thing that would allow us to concentrate on other parts of the work. We are all volunteers, and what we feed the family with doesn’t come from ICANN-related activities.

Bruce—message heard and received and is being acted upon.

“Ann Onymous” then gave a presentation located at: Icannwiki.org/alac_communication

Erick mentioned that we need to have the rss feed from the LA ISOC, JP said our website’s content management system can’t receive it unless they change the mimetype. It doesn’t pass RSS validators. We will continue to try and resolve,

Wendy went thru the various communications tools we have—2 web sites, difficulty there also is that the icann site is frequently out of date. Bruce mentioned that he is going to try and remedy that.

Wendy went thru the various mailing lists and who’s on them, and who should be on them Wendy moved that we all be added to the als discuss list. This was seconded by a member of the audience and everyone agreed to it.

Hong pointed out how long people are having to wait to hear anything from us on their ALS status. How can this be addressed?

Erick talked about communications problems with ALS’s-—how much input does anyone really want to have? People don’t understand that we want to hear from them.

Jaqueline wondered if the ALS contacts are really getting the mail in the first place—or if they are not interested in it, or they do not know enough about it, etc. Are there barriers we don’t know about?

Back to Wendy who talked about our Teleconferences—problems with the calls-- problems getting connected and getting calls. The last call was better however. Too early to say “mission accomplished”?

IRC/IM/Skype—we should be able to use these tools and we need to experiment with these more.. Everyone should send their IM and Skype addresses to Bruce who will compile a list.

[edit] wendy took notes at the alac wiki mentioned above=

Jaqueline One of the things that regional organizations do is create a support structure in the community that is very small. We support each other with info, it works like a regional support group. Also- the UN 5 regions model may not necessarily be the best way to organize ourselves…small island developing states –another UN list--has to do with “islandness”—Fiji and Jamaica are much much closer together rather than Fiji and Japan for example.

Roberto If we start proposing changes even to the regions model that is a guarantee that we lose another two years without doing anything—just add it to a list of proposed changes.

The mother of all problems is how to get the interest of the individual user and to answer the question why should I be interested? People who are involved know that there are 100s of issues that are affecting individual users. For example-- the 7% increase in the price of .com- to be very honest if I have to pay over the next 4 years for my domain I wouldn’t lose sleep—it’s not a lot of money. Irrelevant. But if you put together the millions of domain names at 7 cents each it adds up.

We have an imbalance—whoever has a commercial interest is in, everyone else is left out—how to put the user voice in practice? It will be difficult—we may be better to go to orgs rather than individuals because we may get more $ to support these things. In the history of internet governance I have always seen the same faces.

Annette—makes a shift todiscuss what came up in the EURALO meeting aboiut bylawa of RALOS. Ap and eu have to define aims and priciples— Who is a member Working structures Management Decision making

Meetings—who pays—problems in financing. Election procedures Budget and financing

Annette presented a group brainstorming document from the euralo meeting—high level thoughts.

Outreach- reaching out to inform internet users on the areas in the scope of ICANN.

Hong- different regions may have different aims etc.

Annette—does an org have one vote, does individual have one vote—how to tell if it is true how many members a group has—sounds simple but is very complex. We need simple rules but may not be as just as we would like them. Membership fees? Low fee might solve casual membership.

Basis for a standard rate for membership?—Erick suggested that one member of each region partictpate in a committee to discuss this.

Long discussion about how an org joins the ralo.

Vittorio let’s keep it basic—minimum duty of a RALO is to once a year vote to have a member of the ALAC—coordinates news among the ALS’s—what else—other issues—up to the RALO to decide.

Erick—each RALO will define what else it wants to do in its own committee. Roberto—there must be an annual meeting-doesn’t have to be face to face—but there needs to be a voting mechanism must elect rep to at large, and that’s basically it—outreach etc left to the RALO.

Annette asked for written input on what each RALO in each region would like to establish—maybe to encourage an exchange on some problems and solutions.

JP-suggested creating a “roll your own RALO—grow your own RALO”—kit, to have sample bylaws /operating principles—and requirements, plus suggestions for other things RALOs could do. Make it available to download from the website.

Jaqueline-suggested ABC’s of RALOs—here is the bare minimum thing you have to do—here is a checklist of other things ralos might be wanting to do—Erick said he would do this for LAC.

No one else volunteered for their regions.

It was shown in section H of the bylaws that individuals can become members of RALOs if the MOU with ICANN allows.

During the meeting it was noted that due to Bret’s absence Annette appointed Wendy as temporary GNSO liaison temporarily because whois was being discussed. Everyone agreed that we should have voted on it first. Annette apologized. Wendy resigned the temp appt. in the interest of transparency.

Jacqueline moved to reappoint her, Jean seconded. Annette called the question and it was unopposed.

An audience member asked to have contact information for the ALS’s in his region, as the emails on the ICANN wesite are XXXXXed out. Bruce said he would get the information to the person who asked. Meeting adjourned at 3:20