Thank you for your clarification Danny, some minor points in reply are raised below...<CLO> -----Original Message----- From: Danny Younger [mailto:dannyyounger@yahoo.com] Sent: Wednesday, 17 October 2007 8:42 AM To: cheryl@hovtek.com.au Cc: 'At-Large Worldwide' Subject: GNSO working group Hi Cheryl, The purpose of the roll call was to get ALAC members to focus on policy work; having listened to the last ALAC teleconference wherein policy matters received the usual amount of attention (almost none) I deemed this to be a reasonable approach to solicit a response. <CLO>If you are referring to the transcript of the October 9th Meeting then NO Policy discussion could be discussed or actioned as there was not a quorum of existing ALAC at that meeting and the newly appointed ALAC members who did attend do not take up their role until the close of the AGM at LA. As ad hoc Chair of that meeting (which was the first held under our new ROP's) I can assure you we were VERY careful to follow proper process, so the opportunity was taken to better inform our new NomCom appointed Members who were in attendance, about the action items in the AGENDA... You should note however that work is also done between meetings online in both subcommittee structures and by the ALAC as a whole so please also refer to any reports of those outcomes which are also available on other pages of the ALAC Wiki Candidly, the limited (almost non-existent) participation of ALAC members in the prior RAA WG was more than disappointing, and frankly, I didn't want to see a repeat performance as we are faced with major issues that require substantive thought and commentary. <CLO> I certainly hear what you are saying on this point... As you know I personally responded to that working group re this matter; And yes I also agree *most sincerely* that we MUST focus on POLICY (as we must note do many of the recently appointed and longer serving ALAC Members who make up the ALAC at the moment {and do remember RALO elected representatives from ALS's etc., have only been coming on board in the last (less than 12 month) of this process} and that we have spent far too much time involved in process matters)... But you can look backward and just identify our faults (and there are no doubt many) OR you can learn from them and improve... I believe this very WG process we are now in is a real and genuine effort at doing just that. And how we best ensure this only gets better as we move into the ALAC structure that will exist after LA is a least 'One more piece of Policy' that we will need to agree upon and forward in our ALAC Face to Face meetings there. The new gTLD recommendations have been under discussion within the community for the last twenty months and follow on the heals of known problems that have been discussed since November of 2000 and that have received significant media attention on a world-wide basis. One would expect ALAC members to be sufficiently informed about matters that have been under the microscope for the last seven years, and one would expect them to be able to prepare remarks on the topic reflecting the concerns of the user community. <CLO> I thought I made clear, but perhaps I did not, that it was the At-Large community and internet users stakeholders (via the RALO's and ALS's that need some small time (I suspect) to make their input that is our most important aspect of this process in my opinion, at least. ALAC Members no doubt do have clear opinions (I know I do) but we need to outreach to the community to actually ascertain input not just assume that my no doubt biased views from my ccTLD experience are reflective of all the concerns the community (again in my case Australia) may have... I need the ALS in Australia to come to their own consensus opinion as a Member of that community just as I need all the ALS's contributing to the APRALO (whom I represent along with Izumi) to do the same... I also have the right and indeed the responsibility to make input into their processes as well. I look forward to whatever comments the ALAC members choose to provide on new gTLDs. <CLO>So do I and we will be following the time plan put out by the Chair of ALAC, Jacqueline over the weekend: 1) Timeframe of ad-hoc WG: ends on Thursday 25 Oct. (2) Links to reference documents are provided (3) The 20 GNSO new gTLD recommendations are cited (4) WG members will each draft comments on whatever issues they might have with certain recommendations (5) Initial comments due by 22 October (6) First draft of Final Document (incorporating all comments) by 23 October (7) Final Document by 25 October (8) ALAC reviews WG effort in LA and provides Statement to accompany the Final Document for transmission to the ICANN board. So some of the ALAC may choose to leave their particular comments to be any of the appropriate stages listed therein... Kindest regards, CLO ____________________________________________________________________________ ________ Catch up on fall's hot new shows on Yahoo! TV. Watch previews, get listings, and more! http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/3658