Dear Lutz, I wouldn't go as far as saying that ALAC is no longer necessary if the ALAC cannot fulfil its technical part of its mandate because that's what it actually is: a part of its mandate. There are many other parts too many of which are to do with capacity building and with policy development that might be non technical in nature. That said, we do have the ability to comment on *all* of ICANN's processes and some of ICANN's work is technical in nature. As a result, we need to have a strong "Technical Issues" WG and I ask you all if you would like to join the WG or if you know anyone who might be an asset to the WG. With the "retirement" of some members, I do feel that we do not have enough people who have a broad technical knowledge that can help us with our Statements and relaying of messages from the technical part of the At-Large community. Kind regards, Olivier On 13/11/2013 04:39, Lutz Donnerhacke wrote:
On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 09:06:12AM +0800, Rinalia Abdul Rahim wrote:
4. The ALAC, as a community of Internet Users, is not positioned to offer technical advice, but our community would certainly be affected by technical issues and we certainly are a consumer of technical advice. We therefore would want that advice to be available "on tap" as and when needed, in an easily understandable way, but also forthcoming proactively when there are issues of concern such as in the case of name and variant collisions. I do not agree with this point. IMHO the problem is simply the inability of AtLarge to give the technically skilled people (we have them!) the necessary voice.
Most of the active AtLarge community appears to be a small group of omnipresent people dealing with organizational issues. The AtLarge structure makes it hard for the typical technical ones to participate and bring their expertise in.
If we conclude that ALAC as the visible part of AtLarge is unable to fulfil their technical obligations, ALAC is not longer necessary for an organization which produces mainly technically driven results.
Yes, I'm guilty.
-- Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD http://www.gih.com/ocl.html