Just to be clear, I am in favour of an AtLarge Summit, as a global meeting of all different ALSes worldwide. However, the summit cannot be considered a starting point, or worse something isolated from the daily work: it must be the moment in time and space where the work of the ALSes worldwide comes together, presents results so far, and gets new strength to push forward. To be very honest, I don't see much work ongoing. To quote only one example, and referring to discussions I had in LA and Rio, I will mention the Euralo case: much bandwidth has been used to prepare and hold elections for a gigantic board, that has hardly ever met. I am still a member of the Euralo mailing list, and either I need to trim my mail filters, or not much has been going on lately. If this situation continues, it is not really clear to me what would be the benefit of a summit. The bottom line is that the best case that ALAC can build for a summit is to show activity, and to argue that results could be better if a physical meeting will be organized. But to argue for a summit in absence of the ground work on policy seems to me to be a non-starter. Cheers, Roberto
-----Original Message----- From: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Wendy Seltzer Sent: Wednesday, 21 November 2007 20:47 To: At-Large Subject: [At-Large] Summit Planning
Here's my sense of where things stand. Many on ALAC and in the At-Large Community are interested in bringing ALS representatives to an ICANN meeting for an At-Large Summit. We've heard the staff want to see several things: a draft budget, proposed outcomes, and a measure of community support, and I imagine the Board would want to see a similar assessment. Many of these have already been discussed or are listed on the wiki <https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi?motion_on_the_summit_proposal>
Budget: I'd recommend using the draft budget that Sebastien and Nick have circulated as a starting point. I hear the community has been discussing many ways to minimize the expenses ICANN is asked to bear, so how would those change the draft?
Outcomes: Along with the increased community productiveness and ability to work together that can come from face-to-face meeting, are there specific goals, either in education or policy development?
Support: When is the appropriate time for the ALSs, RALOs, ALAC, and other members of the community to indicate their support for the summit proposal?
Keep in mind that if we want this to happen at the Paris meeting, where transportation costs might be lowest overall, we should expedite it.
--Wendy
-- Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@seltzer.org Visiting Professor, Northeastern University School of Law Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html http://www.chillingeffects.org/ https://www.torproject.org/
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