Hi Lance,

I fully concede it is not in ALAC's direct bylaw mandate to educate the public.

However, it is within the mandate to understand the public needs from the DNS in order to properly advocate those needs to the ICANN Board.
Without such understanding ALAC is only guessing at those needs, and IMO it is guesses wrong far more often than not.

A useful component of such understanding is making at least an attempt at DNS literacy purely from an end-user point of view. Maybe this need be no more than just a useful reference library that veers from the official ICANN party line when the needs of end users diverge from those of the domain industry. For instance, "how new gTLDs affect you" rather than "why the world needs more gTLDs".

In retrospect, maybe even that learning role is beyond At-Large's abilities, as whatever it does will be constrained and mutated to fit the needs of ICANN corporate in the end. Can't scare off future funding, can we?

Then again, I do have a YouTube channel and a personal studio at hand.... Maybe I should just give up on trying to get At-Large to do the right thing and do it myself.

- Evan

On Thu, Sep 14, 2023 at 11:33 AM Lance Hinds via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
Wondering how effective can ALAC ever be when the scope, interest and capacity is so varied and so wide. 

I remember my first meeting as a software engineer interested in the ICANN process running into a room of lawyers debating internet related policy. It was to say the least quite intimidating, and left me thinking about how I fit in given the environment. 

The disrespect from the other constituencies is one thing, but I would submit that some leveling of the playfield needs to be addressed within ALAC itself. I live in a region where the ICANN process and the understanding of the needs of the average user is still rarified air. If ALAC's role, as per Evan, is to inform, it also needs to effectively educate. I have no bright ideas (yet). but maybe some inward reflection is first required before anything else. 

My mere two cents.