At Large Summit working groups 1 and 4 made reference to these meetings: WG1: "For regional meetings, all members of Bylaw-recognized bodies from that region should receive travel and expense support on the same basis and to the same extent as at International Meetings." WG 4: "Opening up the periodic ICANN regional meetings to participants concerned with the public interest from the region concerned." Suggest that a minimum is for all ICANN meetings to included on the meeting calender, agenda's published, input and outcome documents made available. If no transcripts, then detailed notes of what was discussed should be provided as a default. When the agenda's published, all Bylaw-recognized bodies from the region be given the opportunity to attend if the agenda is relevant to their issues. If these are set as the basic operating principles, then whether At Large should be represented could be more on a needs/case by case basis. I don't think the community needs more meetings it must send representatives too. Over three week's year is enough, and the relevant work should be concentrated in the three main ICANN meetings. Adam At 5:50 PM +0200 8/27/09, Patrick Vande Walle wrote:
There was a similar meeting some time ago in Rome, Italy for European registrars. Although it was not a "secret" meeting, it was mainly advertised to the target population, and not outside of it.
From what I heard from participants, the content was about business relations between ICANN and its registrars and exchange of best practices among them. There was no discussion about policy issues.
I take your point though that it is rather inelegant to use you for information about hotels and not invite you to the event itself. Even if you would not be allowed to attend the meetings themselves, you could have at least talked to registrars about At-Large's concerns.
We could suggest for future meetings to have a point on the agenda to address domain registrant issues, featuring an At-Large representative.
Patrick
Evan Leibovitch wrote, On 26/8/09 18:36:
Hello all,
On Saturday it came to my attention that ICANN held a secret meeting for registrars and registries in Toronto.
Why do I claim it was secret? Because there was no advance notice of the meeting on ICANN's website, and the results were published only after the meeting was over. http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-25aug09-en.htm
Living in Toronto, I was actually consulted back in March about local hotels; at the time I explicitly asked to be invited to observe. That's how I know there was no advance notice of the meeting, I was routinely checking after the hotel inquiry. And I certainly received no notice of the meeting, let alone an invitation.
Who knows how many other meetings like this have happened, without notice before (or may be even after) they took place?
Now... why is it that what At-Large does is always under the microscope, our requests for funding for regional and outreach meetings denied, and others are welcome to sit in on our proceedings, but the same rules don't apply to contracted parties? This would have been a perfect opportunity to co-host a NARALO meeting, with ICANN already having booked favourable room rates etc. At very least, I (and others) should have been offered the courtesy to attend as observers. I explicitly recall at the Summit, that the registrar people who inserted themselves into our working group dicussions were quiet explicit that their meetings were as publicly accesible as ours. Apparently that claim was a lie.
I am extremely angry over this in a want-to-get-the-Ombudsman-involved way; I request a response from ICANN staff and I am asking for ALAC's support in this inquiry. As it is unlikely that At-Large staff were aware of this meeting either, I am asking for its help in identifying the source of this clandestine activity. We are owed an explanation of why some ICANN constituencies get to have secret, private regional meetings but others do not get to have regional meetings -- private or public -- at all.
- Evan -- Patrick Vande Walle Blog: http://patrick.vande-walle.eu Twitter: http://twitter.vande-walle.eu facebook: http://facebook.vande-walle.eu
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