Hi Roberto, Many thanks for your comments. You speak for many of us. Lets face it we are in an open society, not everyone can be pleased. The Internet Ecosystem is like a Factory that continues to evolve and improve over time with the sole aim of satisfying its customers needs. The improvement is driven by Research and Innovation and requires an open mind. That said and like any factory that manufactures good it may or may no have customers. Some Customers are simply put off by the operating environment or technological issues which might not meet their expectations. As such, a lot has been achieved and we are poised to achieve a lot more with those that are committed to walk this journey which doesn't seem to have a definate end. Best Regards On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 11:24 PM Roberto Gaetano < roberto_gaetano@hotmail.com> wrote:
Dear Christian, I don’t have the answers to the many questions you ask, but I will briefly try. To the question about where the funding comes, I agree with you that ICANN puts in some “money". However, the overwhelming majority of the resources invested in ALAC are coming from the labour of the volunteers, who often even pay their way to meetings. Under whatever economic model or organisational theory developed so far, the analysis will prove that the soft skills provided by the volunteers provide the essence of the “wealth" of the organization, outnumbering by far the financial resources provided by ICANN. In summary, ALAC can exist without the financial support of ICANN, but cannot exist without the people. This is an essential consideration for the analysis. While ICANN can steer a bit the direction, privileging some funding destinations over others, it cannot control the flow of the mainstream. The conclusion that I draw, on which our opinions might differ, is that on the long run it is by and large irrelevant whether ICANN thinks at ALAC as windows dressing or not - what is relevant is what the ALAC team believes that we can collectively do, also because none of us is limiting our participation in Internet policy and governance activities to just ICANN, for Internet users worldwide. You correctly observe that the role of Internet users is crucial, and fear the role of the intermediaries. I share your concerns, but - as the many discussions with my good friend Karl Auerbach over at least two decades show - I am convinced that on a planetary scale representative democracy has far better chances to be achieved than direct democracy, that works well in small homogeneous communities but, IMHO, does not scale. So my problem is not how to eliminate the intermediaries, but how to drive the intermediaries to make sure that the needs and wishes of the user community are represented fairly. That is the model that many reasonably successful democracies use: we elect representatives, and try our best to address them to do the things we want them to do. Not a perfect system, but I stand behind the statement I made a couple of days ago, I do not see a better solution. So, I have used so many words to go to the detail of what I believe is our disagreement or at least divergent opinion. Funny. What a waste! But I can limit to one word my comment to your last sentence: “What is needed is an Internet user focus across the entire stack end to end”. YES! And I hope that ATLAS III will be a step in this direction. Let’s get all the brainware, the *real* resource we have, to achieve this objective. Cheers, Roberto
On 14.07.2019, at 15:15, Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net> wrote:
Dear Roberto
That is a lovely reply. But you are in a better position to answer your question than I or someone else closer to ICANN today. I hope you don't think I was referring to myself as that 1 person you so accurately fathomed from my inadvertently framed formula obfuscation! ;-)
Although I hugely admire the folk working as At Large for trying to promote a user interest in the ICANN melee. It is not working I fear.
Who funds At Large? How does At Large operate and how do its representatives get funded? Who controls the remit for that funding?
ICANN does as I understand it.
I remember being party to a past President of ICANN exclaim offstage "But we don't do that!" when he asked a friend what to talk about and was advised to mention ICANN's role for Internet users . He went up and talked about the role for Internet users anyway. It was an At Large gathering after all.
As I said before I don't know Atlas or what it is trying to do. I am not against training or knowledge or expertise far from it. But I worry that ICANN has always been rather good at introducing hurdles, hoops and complexity and now it seems qualifications limited by who can participate in gaining them to further erode engagement by Internet users.
That is why I poked my keyboard above the parapet once more to test the waters.
The issue around the Internet user is not theoretical. It is real because in the Internet the user is at the edge of the network and that is where both the intelligence and the decision control surface for connectivity between end points has to lie.
Everything else in the middle is just routing across diverse infrastructures to optimise that connectivity.
Everything done in the technical community should be to assist in optimising that connectivity and broadening the application capacity and capabilities between end points.
So what am I trying to say? Internet was developed by a focus from the bottom to the top or rather from the network edge to the network edge at the other side.
Yet institutionally over the last couple of decades the discussion has excluded the network edge and moved towards intermediaries.
Internet users are not represented in IANA, RIRs or in LIRs - intermediaries are. Internet users are not represented in tld registries nor in registrars. - intermediaries are. Internet users are not represented in ISPs or ISP associations or IXPs - intermediaries are Internet users are not represented in Platforms / application service providers. - no one but the platform owner is. increasingly Internet users are not represented in Standards or Specification recommendations - intermediaries are, as unsurprisingly given my list above they are defining the service design for users rather than users themselves.
Even the development stacks albeit open sourced are largely shovelled out of the doors of the intermediary platforms ready made to bolster and extend their unfair advantage in the "cloud".
For instance the UK Internet Service Provider Association last week voted Mozilla an Internet villain for its promotion of DNS over HTTPS. The public ridicule of that amongst aware users forced a climb down by the end of the week. But that was because of the bad public PR created by the volume of approbium. It was not about detailed process discussion in an intermediary technical policy implementation body like ICANN. No Atlas or at large type process has shown itself effective in knocking such nonsenses back.
Yet in private and behind closed doors will ISPs continue their campaign to stop DoH? Of course. They are drafting Internet drafts now to allow ISPs to negate a user's use of DoH across their networks.
Now how much of this user space can At Large by being an ICANN only body really address?
I don't see the scale required being nearly met by focussing on ICANN. I worry that the concentration of energy and focus on ICANN institutionally is increasingly a distraction that too many good people who can make a difference for Internet users are suckered into.
What is needed is an Internet user focus across the entire stack end to end.
Christian
Roberto Gaetano wrote:
Hi Christian, A couple of comments. While I may agree with you that ICAN is by and large insufficient as a forum where the users’ voice is represented, I cannot think of another venue where we could have a different situation. If you have an idea, please share it. As a mathematician, I also have some perplexity on your estimates. 99.99999999% of people unaware of ICANN means that only 0.00000001% of the world population, estimated at below 10 billions, is aware. 0.00000001% of the population is barely 1 individual. My question is: “Who is this only individual on earth that believes that ICANN matters?” 😜 Cheers, Roberto
On 12.07.2019, at 14:53, Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net> wrote:
In no way to detract from any point you are making. But this is the first I've heard about ATLAS participation or these ICANN courses. I also have no idea whether this matters in the slightest.
I suspect I am within a mere 99.99999999% of the Internet userbase on that. I would also argue that I am probably much more aware of ICANN than most Internet users.
This leads me to feel that ICANN is not an appropriate venue to represent my interests or views.
C
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond wrote:
Dear Vanda,
thank you - that is exactly what I wanted to say. I'll come clean: in the preparation phase, I pushed for everyone to follow the same courses for two reasons:
1. Making sure that everybody had reached a high enough level of knowledge by the time we get to Montreal, that we do not end up wasting time on explaining how, for example, the GNSO works during the precious time that we will have face to face. I actually think that learning about ICANN this way is a real benefit to end users - it is vital knowledge needed to evolve in this environment. 2. Making sure that other people in the group, the seasoned members of At-Large, knew what level of knowledge everyone was expected to achieve prior to the meeting, so that we do not end up with a discussion in Montréal that involves 15 expert members of the community and the rest not understanding what the heck they are talking about.
Whilst I sympathize with people like Evan who have not been selected, the complaints about the ICANN learn courses being too long and a waste of time and not being bothered to finish them do not have my sympathy. Sorry. I took all of the mandatory courses, and in fact I also took all of the other ones on the ICANN Learn Web site too, in order to find out what was out there. It took me no more than an hour per course on the non mandatory ones, namely because in cases where I knew the topic well I either fast forwarded the video segments, or ran it at a higher speed than the original. I even ended up sending dozens of corrections to fix the courses to ICANN Learn staff. And lo and behold, I actually came across some real nuggets where I learnt something - and this has completed my education, where I can now comment on more topics that I better understand than before, in the public consultation process. And yes, I am really happy that I took the courses, because I enjoy learning more stuff, and I did. So 5 x 1 hour = 5 hours. The Group that had to focus on Capacity Building asked each other: is it reasonable to ask a volunteer to spend 5 hours on a course within the length of 1 month? And the answer was YES. This could be done in chunks of 15 minutes, if wanted. It was really not a real workload. Now I am reading many emails from many people about them not being able to complete the courses in time. Well, there were also the Webinars, as an even easier alternative. I am sorry this has taken out some people, but I would have expected a better and more positive response from seasoned participants. My outlook in life is that I am never confident enough to think that I do not require a refresher course - because the world moves on and I cannot rely solely on my past knowledge.
Kindest regards,
Olivier
On 11/07/2019 21:34, Vanda Scartezini wrote:
Being in ICANN for around 20 years and have been using the e-learning courses for long time in capacitation to others, I was one that felt no real need to attend all courses or webinar.
But I did all those, because rules in a worldwide selection are there to be followed, no exception shall be made if there was a selection criteria.
I am sorry not to have well prepared people attending ATLAS III, but I see no point in complain against the rules clearer stated before the beginning of the process.
best to all
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*From: *At-Large <at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org> on behalf of John Laprise <jlaprise@gmail.com> *Date: *Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 15:02 *To: *Humberto Carrasco <hcarrasco@cmsz.cl> *Cc: *'At-Large Worldwide' <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> *Subject: *Re: [At-Large] Fwd: ATLASIII Participation
Indeed
On Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 1:01 PM Humberto Carrasco <hcarrasco@cmsz.cl <mailto:hcarrasco@cmsz.cl>> wrote:
Dear John,
Please, do not forget that webinars were an alternative of online courses.
Regards
Enviado desde mi iPhone
El 11-07-2019, a la(s) 13:55, John Laprise <jlaprise@gmail.com <mailto:jlaprise@gmail.com>> escribió:
Hi Evan,
Simply put, it wasn't about you.
The program committee, ALAC and the selection committee agreed that participation in the webinars was a hard requirement. Full stop.
Making exceptions would have opened a can of worms we decided to leave sealed, for better or worse.
Sent from my Pixel 3XL
John Laprise, Ph.D.
On Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 12:49 PM Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org <mailto:evan@telly.org>> wrote:
Hi Judith.
Yes, I applied before the deadline. I committed to take the "how does ICANN work" courses but apparently didn't finish them in time. So apparently I have not sufficiently demonstrated that I understand how ALAC operates within ICANN.
(BTW, thouse ICANN learn courses are all aimed at registrants' PoV -- they miss much that is important to end users -- ie, At-Large. But, according to the selection committee, I don't know enough about this kind of thing.)
- Evan
On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 at 13:28, Judith Hellerstein <judith@jhellerstein.com <mailto:judith@jhellerstein.com>> wrote:
HI Evan,
Did you apply? I was not on the evaluating team but as I understand it there were very few applications from NARALO
Best,
Judith
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On 7/11/2019 1:19 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Having been rejected from participating because I would have been such a tourist, I have no comment.
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