Roberto, your message demands a more thorough and thoughtful reply than time permits today, but I for one am delighted with your offer and welcome your contributions. I will have a more specific reply in the next few days. For those who are younger than I am in ICANN years, Roberto is a former ALAC member (from the days of the Interim ALAC), a past (and excellent) ALAC Liaison to the Board and a NomCom appointee to the ICANN Board. Regards, Alan At 22/10/2012 11:49 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
Hi all.
I am not sure whether it is appropriate to send this email to these lists, but please feel free to use the delete key.
I have been following the recent events, including the Toronto meeting, from the distance.
Now that I have a little more time, I would like to become more active, and I am trying to figure out which is the best way.
The question is basically where can I provide an added value, and what are the topics that are more interesting to me (there is no point in taking commitments to do things that I feel unimportant or uninteresting, as the logical consequence would be to drop the commitment eventually).
My main problem with ICANN is that, as I also told the new CEO in Prague, the stakeholder model is not fully operational. There are stakeholder groups that are less influential in the policy making process for a number of reasons. Although I agree on the fact that ICANN should not become a parliament, where each component of the internet community has to be exactly represented according to some metrics, nevertheless we must aim at having all voices heard and at having the decision making process to take into account all those voices.
My "natural" constituency is the AtLarge: I have no direct commercial interest nor specific contractual or technical role in the internet community, so ALAC fully represents my profile. My choice is therefore to become active in ALAC, and specifically within my local community, the EURALO. I have no affiliation with any ALS, but EURALO accepts individual members.
The areas in which I would like to concentrate the always insufficient time and effort are described below (not necessarily in priority order).
. Outreach and participation
We all know that outreach is important for every stakeholder group, but it is even more important for ALAC. Our community is sparse, composed of individuals and organizations that have a "mild" interest in ICANN, in the sense that their daily life is not perceived as being affected by internet policy decisions, because either their income does not depend from the internet, or because their problems related to the internet are more depending on issues outside the scope of ICANN (for instance, basic connectivity is more important than the introduction of new gTLDs). However, we are aware that the active part of ALAC has the consistency of a rounding error compared to the potential AtLarge community: people who have never heard of ALAC or that have no interest in joining vastly outnumber the volounteers that are active in ALAC. Under these circumstances, the growth of ALAC and the increase in active participation in policy development is of the paramount importance for our recognition. An incredible amount of work has been done on this topic, with excellent results, but I do believe we have to do more to further increase the number and variety of stakeholder represented by us.
Therefore, I would like to participate in the outreach sub-committee.
. Alliances and synergies
We have established, thanks to the current and previous leadership and hard work by the volounteers, excellent relationships with large parts of the internet community. I remember in the early days of ALAC the way other ICANN constituencies were suspiciously looking at us, and often considered us unable to provide added value to ICANN (and even in more recent days, when I was on the Board, it has been very difficult to convince some fellow Directors that ALAC deserved the recognition of a full Board seat).
However, even in this case, I believe we need to do more.
One of the areas where I can help is the ccTLD community. I have always said that there are huge similarities between the ALAC and the ccTLD community: for instance, we both must "think globally" when we develop policy positions, but must at the same time "act locally" because our membership is deeply rooted in the local community. Incidentally, we share this same structural feature with the GAC: they also have a strong "local" responsibility.
When I was at ALAC/EURALO, I tried to liaise with CENTR: I participated to CENTR meetings, presenting ALAC and the potential synergies with the ccTLDs. I did not achieve immediate results, the close connections we have today are the effect of the good work of the people following me. Nevertheless, I think that the plant has grown also because I have participated to plant the seed, and that I can provide further contribution in this direction.
I am not posing a candidature for the succession of Cheryl, once she will move to a different task, but I believe I can be of some help in liaising with the ccTLD community.
. Internet governance
Although this item is abundantly covered by the excellent people we have, who are very active in the different internet governance fora, I believe that my past experience with international organizations could be helpful. I will not have the resources (time and finance) to attend meetings, but I can read documents and exchange opinions by email.
. ALAC recognition
This is another sticky point. You have witnessed my rant on the issue of the collection of input on policy and its processing by the Board. This is a key issue: the community will have no incentive to provide volounteer work if the result is not affecting the Board's decisions, but on the other hand failure from the community to provide input on policy will give an excellent excuse to the "ALAC-skeptical" party on the Board for dismissing our contribution and role.
There is no easy solution: produce input on policy issues, and follow up, demanding justification on Board decisions that might look as not having taken contributions into account.
In summary, this is what I would like to contribute on. Of course, with the constraints of the limited time I have and the very limited budget I have for participation to events. And of course provided that the points I list are considered strategic priorities.
Best regards,
Roberto
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