Dear Alan, Your dedication and service to the At-Large are legendary. I had wondered often how it would be possible for anyone to fill your gigantic shoes, which tend to grow exponentially in the frenetic ICANN vortex and endless cycle of calls for input. The same thought applies to Cheryl and Olivier. With expanding scope, a team of people with the right blend of skill, interest and dedication could be a solution. The crux of the matter is the sustainability of the volunteer model itself, and I think that the ALAC needs to ponder this issue carefully because demand will always exceed supply where ICANN is concerned. If we have limited capacity and the issue space keeps expanding and the wider At-Large community is unable to help us pick up the slack, then the rational solution is to be selective, which means that we have to prioritize the issues that we address. And in this regard, I tend to agree with Jean-Jacques that we should focus on principles and issues with big picture implication in terms of the global public interest. The management argument says that we need to focus. The evolutionary argument says that it is now the right time to focus on higher principle-based issues with wide ramification for end users. The question that we need to consider (if there is agreement on this) is whether we are comfortable with not being responsive on many issues. My sense is that there may be discomfort in the course of implementation and it will be something that we struggle with. This is not to say that we should not do it! I wecome the views of other ALAC members on this topic. Best regards, Rinalia On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 1:08 PM, JJS <jjs.global@gmail.com> wrote:
*Dear Alan & All,* * * *like others on the ALAC, I am humbled by your dedication, Alan, in promoting the interest of the general Internet user. Your experience with the GNSO is of great value, your analyses have helped nurture awareness within ALAC and At-Large, and your recommendations have always been balanced, workable. The insights you have provided amount to a precious guide to policy development. What you Alan, and others like Cheryl, Evan and Carlton have done, provided perspective to the newcomer to the ALAC, when I arrived in late 2010.* * * *I would like to connect Alan's long and instructive message to a discussion going on elsewhere, about the "At-Large Report of the GNSO WG on Consumer Trust, Consumer Choice, and Competition Workspace". Such a conjunction prompts me to offer a few remarks:* * * *- First, a sociological overview. Since its inception, At-Large and the ALAC emerged as a top-down response to a strong demand for recognition of the importance of the user perspective. As commercial interests became more weighty in ICANN, it became obvious that a new balance had to be struck. It is this awareness of inadequate representation of the general user which led the ALAC Review to strongly recommend the inclusion of a user-community member on the Board, with voting rights.* * * *- Second, there is a lesson to be learned from this pattern of evolution. In the early stages, the ALAC had to prove its "worthiness" by taking up a more significant share of the community task of providing input to the Board and reacting to its initiatives. And this was ably done during Cheryl's tenure as Chair. By the same token, when the ALAC Review recommended that the Board welcome in its midst a person designated by the ALAC, that move was finally successful because it was presented as a recognition of progress already achieved, but also as an "act of faith" (I remember using the term) in the ALAC's ability to evolve even further. In a word, the allocation of a voting member seat on the Board marked the closure of a phase of recognition, and put a seal on the ALAC's legitimacy. This was the context at the time when Olivier was elected as Chair, and his leadership has accelerated this progress.* * * *- Third, I posit that the period before us is quite unlike the previous one. In the past, gaining acceptance as an AC has sometimes required us to relinquish inconvenient principles for the benefit of short-term practicality. But the challenge the ALAC now faces is quite different: how to effectively introduce, or better acclimatize, the fundamental notion of the global public interest, in an organization where commercial interests, the lawyer class, and the satellites gravitating around them, have gained a dominant position. This is not to say that the latter are illegitimate; but it is a question of setting the balance right.* * * *- Fourth, if my analysis is not completely wrong, I would suggest that the ALAC can now afford to concentrate on wider issues, on fostering principles which may have been neglected, while at the same time pursuing its valuable work on responding to the Board and neighbours in the ACs and SOs. I admit this is an important choice, but I believe now is the right time to formulate the question squarely, and to act accordingly.* * * *Best regards,* *Jean-Jacques.*
2013/2/9 Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca>
This is a long message, but please take the time to read it.
This is my seventh year as the ALAC Liaison to the GNSO. It has always been a challenge, and has at times been exciting, frustrating, productive, discouraging and often satisfying. And I have learnt far more on so many levels than I could even start to recount here.
I take some pride at having initiated two PDPs on behalf of the ALAC, and seen them through to create new ICANN policy. One, domain tasting, was so successful at killing a distasteful practice that most people no longer even remember what it was. The other on post-expiration registrant rights was successful in that the resultant policy gives registrants some rights to renew gTLD accidentally expired domains where they previously had no rights at all, but the results were not quite at the level that we had hoped for, to some extent due to the limited involvement of At-Large throughout the process.
I, along with Cheryl when her busy schedule has allowed, have been regular participants in quite a number of GNSO activities, both policy and administrative. Others such as Evan and Carlton have made their voices heard as well, and more recently we have seen a few others start to participate.
This note is prompted by a number of issues.
First, it hopefully will come as no surprise that I do not intend to hold the role of ALAC Liaison to the GNSO for Life. It is therefore increasingly important to have more people knowledgeable about the GNSO and active in its activities, so that when a new Liaison is required, the ALAC will have good options for my replacement.
Second, for several years, the GNSO spent far more time than perhaps it should have on its re-organization and reformulation of all of its procedures and methodologies. These changes were mandated by the Board and the GNSO had little choice but to carry out the re-org, but that has now largely been completed. What was a slow trickle of policy work when the focus was on administration is now becoming a flood. There are currently several PDPs active and more coming down the pipe (I am participating in three of them, and I am a vice-chair of one). In addition, the GNSO is under increasing pressure to develop policy through other means, and neither the community nor the Board is comfortable with policy development taking years. The net effect is that the work going on at any time is growing, and there is pressure to get the work done faster. If At-Large is to be able to influence these efforts, it MUST get involved from the very start. And it will take a lot more than one or two people. Issuing comments and advice at the end of the process is simply not going to allow us to properly influence policy outcomes.
Lastly, the overall character of many discussions in ICANN is changing. When I started, the "public interest" was a phrase that showed up in an obscure way in the ICANN Bylaws and was rarely mentioned. Users who did not register domain names were generally not considered to be a factor in decisions. With increased ALAC visibility and the Affirmation of Commitment, that has changed. A lot! As the one part of ICANN to have the interest of the billions of Internet users as its core mission, ALAC and At-Large have an opportunity to help drive ICANN in a direction that indeed serves the public interest. But we can only do that if we are actively and intensely involved in activities outside of our little corner of ICANN. We need to be out there, participating and helping to formulate the policies that we believe WILL benefit the public interest and Internet users. And we need to have the credibility so that when we do engage, people listen.
I will soon put together a list of ongoing GNSO activities as well as those that may be starting soon. For a few ongoing activities, it is probably too late for new people to get involved. For others, getting involved now will be an interesting learning experience. And as new projects start up, there will be lots of new opportunities.
I am prepared to work with anyone who has a true interest in becoming active in GNSO policy activities. Some of these topics are complex and will take work to understand and eventually to contribute. Others will be far easier. But in all cases, helping to formulate GOOD policy will be both satisfying and productive.
Alan
(also being sent to the At-Large list)
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