Hi Siva,
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
The suggestions above sound too drastic to take sides with.
I make no apologies for this proposal's radicalism. But I also recognize that proper public education, surveys and research will be expensive. ICANN will not manufacture a significantly bigger budget.
But if ALAC is focused on the areas I propose, there is substantial savings to be realized in cutting back on facets of At-Large that have, at best, offered only cosmetic benefit.
Is ICANN spending significant sums on ALS activities to save from?
If DNS is demystified there would be greater user participation.
Maybe. Not everyone who needs to know how the DNS works needs to be engaged in it. Nor should they. People who get the education and are interested to help will know where to find us, reducing the wasteful expenditures on "outreach".
Outreach is not wasteful, may be the present pattern and styles of expenditure on outreach proves wasteful?
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
+1. A considerable amount of R&D could happen through social media, not necessarily by votes, even by 'likes' and reactions to non-commercially promoted posts and tweets
That's not where I was headed. Proper quantitative research requires effort and expertise. I would never trust social media for this, at least as a primary source.
Agreed. But social media, with professional and orchestrated use can help ALAC raise pertinent questions and gather an indication, if not scientific answers.
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Needs to go even beyond that. ALAC could become more emphatic on Cross Community PDPs.
That's way too into the details. I expect that if we engage in real research, the areas of global public concern will not lie where you may believe they are. What is of great interest inside the domain bubble is of little interest to the world outside that bubble, and vice versa.
Doing this properly, I expect, will dramatically change ALAC's policy priorities.
So long as real research does not imply expensive contracts for Studies. Another danger is that the outcome of a Study is not always objective.