Thanks Dev, based on your response, I then like to focus on item 1; the problem statement. Kindly find comments inline:

Sent from my LG G4
Kindly excuse brevity and typos

On Feb 15, 2017 2:53 AM, "Dev Anand Teelucksingh" <devtee@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello Seun, to respond to your questions/comments:

1. What is wrong with the current ALS structure that the "ISOC chapter like" setup as a replacement would address? If this is with regards to individual membership, isn't some RALOs already doing that? What can we learn from their experience and how can we improve on it sounds like a way forward to me.

- A lot of time and energy is used in At-Large to "certifying" organisations as At-large Structures, whether organisations are end user focused, are organisations legitimate, how much members it has, what are the bylaws of the organisation - it takes months, sometimes years for an organisation to become accredited as an At-Large Structure with the ultimate end result being one or two persons in an organisation having the volunteer time, energy, passion to be involved in At-Large whilst serving their organisation. That's because many organisations' (including ISOC chapters) reason for being is not singularly focused on the narrow remit of ICANN issues.

SO: Based on what is stated above, will reviewing the certification requirement address the problem?

Many organisations are also facing the challenges of the Internet and Social Media, persons able to find technical knowledge online and network directly with like minded individuals without joining "formal" organisations.

SO: Okay this seem to refer to individual membership which as you know is being attended to by some RALOs already (but ofcourse can be improved). On the other hand there are also people on AtLarge who are not even Members of any ALS at the moment so do you not think the current structure already provide accommodation for such individual who doesn't want a formal involvement?

- The marketing of ICANN At-Large as a result is also confusing as it foremost focuses on organisations joining rather than individuals, the latter often joining in an ad-hoc manner.

SO: I totally agree with this point, and this will then call for reviewing our outreach strategy. It makes absolute sense to reachout to individuals instead, get them to join as individuals, when they are in, they themselves can decide to take it a step further by inviting their organisation and having them join.

- The motivation for ALSes to market to individuals in their country to join At-Large is not there as organisations would seek to have persons join and assist their organisation first than be involved ICANN At-Large.

SO: Hmm...While I see your point, I think the other point is that current structure in some RALOs doesn't have option for individual hence an existing ALS is only motivated to encourage other organisations to join as an ALS which indeed can take time and make it discouraging. Still goes back to comment made above about making provisions for individual membership.

- For countries with zero At-Large presence, individuals that may have an interest in Internet end user issues have an obstacle of forming a group first to then participate in At-Large.

SO: Indeed, same Comment as above.

- This is cumbersome and confusing with no obvious benefit. Its why groups in ICANN like NCUC which are easier to join (and market) appear to be more successful.

- The replacement idea of online At-Large Chapters would unite users, individuals, organisation members as a Special Interest Group, the Interest being to focus on ICANN activites as it relates to the interests of Internet end users.

SO: If the AtLarge chapters is just the title we want to use to accommodate individual membership, so instead of having just one ALS like organisation that serves as umbrella for all individuals interested to join (as some RALOs have done) we setup country chapters and have individuals join through that while the ALS continues. The other option for a start could be to have a chapter per RALO and then have country chapters formed once the membership in the RALO chapter from a particular country reach certain number. Overall I personally feel going this route will bring about more "online" administrative work but I will be fine if we are in for that.

- The marketing becomes much simpler - have an interest, join the online At-Large Chapter in your country. Building relationships with other stakeholders (eg ccNSO) in country would also become easier.

SO: Dev I am sure you know that current ALS/RALO is actually online (once the accreditation hurdle is passed), so I think onus of the whole issue is more about providing a means for individual membership to join formerly.

Regards

2. I don't know about many ISOC chapters but based on the few I am familiar with, I doubt ISOC chapter is as successful as such, especially in the area of sourcing diverse input into a global process. Don't get me wrong, I am an ISOC member and this is not to play down on the ORG but to recognise that even as they strive to improve there will always be participation challenge which isn't anyone's fault (when it gets to certain level)

- Indeed, the challenges of managing the bureaucracy of a organisation can drain the few volunteers in organisation that strive to fulfill the work of the organisation. Often those passionate few persons working in the organisation are the ones called on to get involved in At-Large.

3. I can assure you that the level of success that ISOC chapters may have achieved is among many things also because of the support/resources/funding that ISOC global provided to her chapters. Is ICANN ORG and community willing and ready for such commitment. Should we go into this and get blamed later?

- We are getting blamed yesterday and today. :-)
- The resources are primarily online ones - eg mailing list, online conference room, wiki accounts, online voting, essentially the online support offered to RALOs today. It is NOT about registering an organisation in country, paying rent fees, paying taxes as ISOC requires. The only significant dollar amount that could be needed would be for public outreach activites of the At-Large Chapter and that could be covered by the type of funding of local outreach activites  project implemented for FY17.

4. Currently the only significant things we do for ALSes is an opportunity to have one global meeting at every ATLAS event and in if some RALOs are lucky they get to bring their ALS reps to one ICANN event in their region. Based on this, we already have significant noise that ICANN already spend too much on AtLarge, you can't imagine what we will get if it were chapters because maintaining a chapter isn't cheap (especially if it's to effective)

- Again, its not as expensive. Its the same support offered to RALOs, but done at the country/territory level.

5. It's easier to sell ISOC chapter to a country/Netizen than to sell an AtLarge chapter, so I see a significant marketing challenge there.

- Indeed, ISOC chapters compete with local organisations for mindshare. And persons in an At-Large chapter can be involved in whatever organisations they want to be in, be it ISOC or otherwise.
- Think of the At-Large Chapter as a online Special Interest Group per country.

6. ISOC chapters isn't just a virtual setup and getting an ISOC chapter up and running indeed requires legal documentation locally. If we think it will be easy to get someone interested in not just leading a team but going through that process then we should go interview some countries/localities who are still trying to get their ISOC chapter up and running (bear in mind that ISOC is more marketable).

- Again, its not about registering companies in countries, the At-Large chapters are virtual, just like RALOs are today.

7. The current ALS is somewhat based on freewill hence ICANN/AtLarge has no serious obligation to ensure the ALS remain alive as the organisation runs independently. However once we put AtLarge on that path of chapters, we would have signed up for more upbringing responsibilities which would result to more administrative responsibilities (was ITEMS mentioning there is too much internal processes in current structure, wait for what is to come if we go chapter route).

- But the metrics and tracking of involvement of the persons in an At-Large Chapter becomes much, much more easier to ICANN to audit. The processes and rules for each online At-Large Chapter will be consistent. At-Large becomes more accountable and transparent.

Dev Anand

On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 2:25 PM, Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello Dev,

As much as I think what you've said is interesting, I doubt it's what AtLarge require as an improvement. A few question/comments comes to mind as I read through your proposal:

1. What is wrong with the current ALS structure that the "ISOC chapter like" setup as a replacement would address? If this is with regards to individual membership, isn't some RALOs already doing that? What can we learn from their experience and how can we improve on it sounds like a way forward to me.

2. I don't know about many ISOC chapters but based on the few I am familiar with, I doubt ISOC chapter is as successful as such, especially in the area of sourcing diverse input into a global process. Don't get me wrong, I am an ISOC member and this is not to play down on the ORG but to recognise that even as they strive to improve there will always be participation challenge which isn't anyone's fault (when it gets to certain level)

3. I can assure you that the level of success that ISOC chapters may have achieved is among many things also because of the support/resources/funding that ISOC global provided to her chapters. Is ICANN ORG and community willing and ready for such commitment. Should we go into this and get blamed later?

4. Currently the only significant things we do for ALSes is an opportunity to have one global meeting at every ATLAS event and in if some RALOs are lucky they get to bring their ALS reps to one ICANN event in their region. Based on this, we already have significant noise that ICANN already spend too much on AtLarge, you can't imagine what we will get if it were chapters because maintaining a chapter isn't cheap (especially if it's to effective)

5. It's easier to sell ISOC chapter to a country/Netizen than to sell an AtLarge chapter, so I see a significant marketing challenge there.

6. ISOC chapters isn't just a virtual setup and getting an ISOC chapter up and running indeed requires legal documentation locally. If we think it will be easy to get someone interested in not just leading a team but going through that process then we should go interview some countries/localities who are still trying to get their ISOC chapter up and running (bear in mind that ISOC is more marketable).

7. The current ALS is somewhat based on freewill hence ICANN/AtLarge has no serious obligation to ensure the ALS remain alive as the organisation runs independently. However once we put AtLarge on that path of chapters, we would have signed up for more upbringing responsibilities which would result to more administrative responsibilities (was ITEMS mentioning there is too much internal processes in current structure, wait for what is to come if we go chapter route).

Overall maybe it may have been good to have a chapter like AtLarge in the early 2000 before the community reduced AtLarge to a single Board Member organisation and with advisory capacity, I doubt such is realistic in the present ICANN not because it will not receive support of the community but because it doesn't sound sustainable!

Regards

Sent from my LG G4
Kindly excuse brevity and typos

On Feb 13, 2017 15:05, "Dev Anand Teelucksingh" <devtee@gmail.com> wrote:

Here's an idea for an alternative proposal for At-Large to the EMM model proposed in the At-Large Review

My thoughts - The proposed EMM has flaws. Some immediate ones :

- it destroys the community and with that, the consensus building of community with replacement
of individuals with even less ties to the public community. Such individuals will promote and collude with other individuals to keep themselves in the loop. Also, with many of the policy discussions in GNSO being English, this permanently eliminates persons from developing/emerging economies from non-English from ever participating.
- given that any individual could already participate in GNSO, we would be no different from such random individuals

- it removes the mandate on oversight and accountability on ICANN activities from end user interests

- a thousand individuals in one large country will override 10 individuals from a small country  so there will be less diversity in the EMM model only from those countries with large number of  individuals.
- Nomcom appointees to ALAC new to ICANN will serve as Liasions to other groups is not sensible

There are many more problems but I want to focus on a IMO a better At-Large model than the EMM one:

- ICANN establishes At-Large Chapters in each country similiar in concept to Rotary or ISOC chapters.

- each chapter is open to anyone interested in ICANN from the interests of end users.

- ICANN can set guidelines for each chapter - some examples: must do certain level of outreach, have term limits, have a public F2F awareness meeting to recruit new persons. ICANN would need to provide some funding to make this happen but this would be small and the chapters can account to ICANN for expenses.

- ICANN can provide the tools (mailing lists, conference tools) to facilitate online discussions.

- Because there is a consistent brand - At-Large Chapter in the country, marketing/promoting is
greatly simplified and easier to explain.

- Given that such chapters are virtual, it makes chapters easy to establish with only a few individuals from a country without the challenges of having formal organisations with bylaws and pay taxes.
 

So an At-Large chapter ends up being a virtual ALS in each country in the ALAC/RALO/ALS model.

The RALOs will consist of the chapters from each country in the region with each chapter electing two persons to coordinate the RALO work. The RALO will be better positioned to better fulfil its MOUs with ICANN and the RALO and ALAC would not have to bother with analysing whether an organisation meets the criteria of an ALS.

The At-Large chapters will be better able to network with At-Large chapters in other countries and build consensus on policy issues and help promote and grow the At-Large Community.

---

Dev Anand

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