Excellent comments, Evan, If memory serves, though, I seem to remember Nick(?) mentioning to me that they tried something similar before but nobody showed up so we may not experience the problem of hundreds and thousands getting on the telephone conferences. That being said, that shows that there IS a problem with just doing telephone conferences. Everybody learns in different ways so I would lean more to having a two-pronged approach: the telephone conferences AND having the policy briefings on-line. That way people can pick the way they want learn things. The telephone conferences would go a long way to bringing us "regulars" up to speed so that we will be able to communicate on issues better. I know that this won't be reaching EVERYBODY but if even some of us become better educated, then we can help to point the general public to the appropriate sources of information. I don't see the telephone conferences as being a be-all-end-all but just a good start. Just my opinion and its good to see ICANN trying SOMETHING! D Darlene A. Thompson Community Access Program Administrator Nunavut Department of Education/N-CAP c/o P.O. Box 1000, Station 910 Iqaluit, NU X0A 0H0 Phone: (867) 975-5631 Fax: (867) 975-5610 dthompson@gov.nu.ca -----Original Message----- From: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Evan Leibovitch Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 9:35 AM To: Nick Ashton-Hart Cc: policy@icann.org; At-Large Worldwide Subject: Re: [At-Large] Scheduling regular telephonic policy briefings on Policy for the At-Large Community Hello Nick, The plan to do regular policy briefings on issues determined by ALAC is a great idea and long overdue, but the delivery mechanism of the conference call is suitable for little more than a small clique. Given that the target audience is not just ALAC or ALS representatives, but indeed all ALS members and beyond, though, I would suggest that telephone conference calls are not the optimal medium for distribution. Personally, I find conference calls beyond 20 people unwieldy and inefficient; all it takes is one or two people to be on speakerphone for a call to be almost unlistenable. As we want a target participation in the hundreds if not thousands, forget telephone interactivity; it might as well be a recorded message. No matter when you schedule the calls they will be inconvenient to some significant proportion of the target audience, and then of course is the unavoidable issue of language diversity. I would suggest, in the early going, that we start with the written word -- clearly explained policy briefing available online, in multiple (_layman's_) language versions. This then gets augmented with an input mechanism to receive questions (email and/or web form); answers are collected and posted alongside the original core briefing documents. After all, ICANN is about the Internet, not the POTS(*) network. Large-scale interactive sessions can take place using mechanisms such as Internet Relay Chat, Skype or even MSN, in a manner that can keep communications channels "open" in every time zone while being infinitely more cost-effective (and of higher transmission quality) than conference calls. The first thing that came to mind during the mention of telephone calls was doing podcasts; this would indeed be exploiting technology worthy of our current century. However, before getting into that level of ambition I would prefer to concentrate on the quality of the content. Let's ensure that what is said in the briefings is suitably accessible by the public, not just we elite who are actively involved and closest to the source. I truly appreciate this initiative and want it to serve the purpose of At-Large; I would just ask that, from the outset, its aim in both content and delivery, meets the needs of the whole community we are charged to serve. A small shift in approach will lead to both wider reach AND cost savings. Evan Leibovitch Chair, NARALO (*) -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_old_telephone_service _______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann .org At-Large Official Site: http://www.alac.icann.org ALAC Independent: http://www.icannalac.org