All, given that I won't be present at the meeting with the NCUC, I'd like to provide briefly my opinions on the main subject, LSE recommendation #19, which, as explained in para 4.35 of the GNSO review, would create a "civil society" constituency in the GNSO, "including the current Non-Commercial Users Constituency, but also ordinary domain holders, and possibly individuals currently represented via the At Large Advisory Committee of ICANN". (Please note that the recommendation itself does not say that the ALAC and the NCUC should merge, it just says that the new "CS" GNSO constituency should include individual users as well.) Merging with the NCUC: I don't know. It could be useful to have a single "general public" constituency at ICANN, but in that case we'd have to ensure that we keep both levels of participation, the general/Board one (current ALAC) and the GNSO one (current NCUC). OTOH, by not merging we keep two separate voices for non-commercial interests in GNSO Task Forces. We now also allow groups to pick ALAC, NCUC or both according to what they are interested in, if they're eligible for both, so more choice for them; also, the types of groups involved in the two entities, though overlapping, are mostly different. Individual membership: I think that NA should create a NARALO which is radically different from the others, based on individuals, so that we can see whether that works and compare. I remain with my view that direct individual participation fits well the US culture, but not the rest of the world. I certainly would not accept a change of membership type all of a sudden, nor one that was imposed from the outside to the existing ALSes/RALOs. Naming: I don't like the term "civil society" in this context, it's really more registrants/customers/users. Timing: this is definitely bad timing for a merge. I'd like to give a chance to the new RALOs for a couple of years before concluding that yet more changes in the ALAC structure are necessary. I'd also wait for the ALAC review to be concluded. Ciao, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------