Jeannette: So far as the LACRALO Secretariat goes, we believe that the MOU between ICANN and the RALO should provide definitive guidance. That aside, it is our view that a RALO Board Member should, of right, have the same support to attend a RALO meeting as every other structure that constitutes the RALO. Carlton LACRALO Secretariat -----Original Message----- From: alac-internal-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:alac-internal-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Jeanette Hofmann Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2008 09:56 AM To: alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org; alac-internal@atlarge-lists.icann.org Subject: [ALAC-Internal] [Fwd: Re: Draft agenda and planning for EURALO¹s 1st General Assembly in Paris] Hello, for what it's worth I forward an exchange between Nick Ashton-Hart and the EURALO board about ICANN's policy re travel support for ICANN meetings. The sad story is that the EURALO board hasn't met since it was formed and, or so it seems, will never meet because 3 board members are individuals without an ALS affiliation. In Europe, the status of individual members is still an open issue. Several of us have been involved in ICANN's early attempts to form an At Large membership. In 2000, the AT Large Membership was thought to be the home mainly for individual users. Now it seems they are not that welcome anymore unless they bring their own funding. What needs clarification across the RALOs is whether or not board members have to be ALS members in order to qualify for travel support to participate in RALO meetings. This is why forward the subsequent exchange we had with Nick about this issue. To prevent misunderstandings, our goal is not to achieve preferential treatment compared to other RALOs. We seek clarification for board members who are not members of ALS regardless of the RALO concerned. thank you, jeanette -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Draft agenda and planning for EURALO¹s 1st General Assembly in Paris Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:15:15 +0200 From: William Drake <william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch> To: Jeanette Hofmann <jeanette@wzb.eu> CC: Ashton-Hart, Nick <Nick.Ashton-Hart@icann.org>, Vittorio Bertola <vb@bertola.eu>, Wolf Ludwig <wolf.ludwig@comunica-ch.net>, Banks, Karen <karenb@gn.apc.org>, Miloshevic, Desiree <dmiloshevic@afilias.info>, Rudi Vansnick <rudi.vansnick@isoc.be>, Dr. Christoph Bruch <bruch@humanistische-union.de>, At-Large Staff <staff@atlarge.icann.org>, Sébastien Bachollet <sebastien.bachollet@isoc.fr>, Veronica Cretu <VeronicaC@diplomacy.edu>, Annette Muehlberg <annette.muehlberg@web.de>, Cheryl Langdon-Orr <cheryl@hovtek.com.au> Hi Jeanette, Feel free to forward my message if you like. BD On 4/17/08 3:46 PM, "Jeanette Hofmann" <jeanette@wzb.eu> wrote:

Hi Bill,

I very much share your thoughts and I wonder if this discussion shouldn't be moved to the ALAC list as it concerns other RALOs as well. ICANN apparently moved from a concept of At large membership for individuals to one that only recognizes organizations. I wonder how many people are actually aware of this and support this move. jeanette

William Drake wrote:

...

Hi Nick,

While this conversation has drifted off, I¹d like to share a couple of closing thoughts on your decision.

If as you say it is a matter of clear policy that ³no region has an opportunity for non-ALS members to receive travel support to attend ICANN meetings,² one would think this could have been made clear when we asked about it repeatedly months ago. Instead, as Jeanette noted, you gave the impression last August that it shouldn¹t be a problem. I think most people would reasonably read ³One could imagine that the invitation could be extended to allow those officers to attend as well² in that way. If there is a policy to the contrary, one could not have so imagined.

Subsequently, a number of times people raised the matter with you in ways that indicated we were therefore assuming the invitation could be extended, and you never corrected us. On the basis of this assumption, people have gone forward and put some time into participating (and would have done much more if we¹d been energized by a F2F meeting in Warsaw or Geneva) with an eye toward finally being able to convene in Paris and really boot things up from there. Now we find out that a chunk of the board is basically to be excluded, not just in Paris, but going forward. Teleconferencing in is obviously no substitute for participating in a first F2F board meeting and a General Assembly, particularly if one wants to get more deeply involved in the work, get to know the ALS folks, etc.

More generally, if non-ALS people essentially have no standing, wouldn¹t the time to make that absolutely clear have been last May, before the region elected non-ALS people to the board? If it had been, when I was approached about getting into this, as a non-ALS person I¹d obviously have said there¹s no point and would have saved a lot of time since then. And if the objective is to energize people to get engaged in ICANN work, one would think it right to let regions organize themselves as they need to and elect who they want...

Anyway, I guess it¹s been a revealing learning process. I of course will not stand for re-election but wish the next board all the best.

Cheers,

Bill

On 4/14/08 6:20 PM, "Nick Ashton-Hart" <Nick.Ashton-Hart@icann.org> wrote:

Sorry if I was unclear ­ that isn¹t quite what I meant and my apologies if what I said led to confusion.

Basically, no region has an opportunity for non-ALS members to receive travel support to attend ICANN meetings. Therefore, if EURALO is allowed to send non-ALS representatives to an ICANN meeting and other regions are not, those other regions receive unequal (lesser) treatment to EURALO.

The Secretariats have previously discussed in principle the idea of establishing differential rules by region related to travel support. The community has not however explored this idea and of course any proposal would need to be equitable across regions, and also within regions.

On 14/04/2008 17:55, "William Drake" <william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch> wrote:

Hi Nick,

Thanks for this reply, but I still need help understanding the nature of the inequity you see. Your argument is that the boards of other regions would consider that ³it would unfairly prejudice² them if the full European board were funded, just as they are? They demand that only some of our board participate in our board meeting and GA?

Bill

On 4/14/08 5:28 PM, "Nick Ashton-Hart" <Nick.Ashton-Hart@icann.org> wrote:

Actually nothing has changed. As you will note from the email below, sent more than 7 months ago, you will notice that the statement I made did not say that the extension would be provided, only that it was possible. I¹m sure that you all understand that we do need to be equitable to all regions.

On 14/04/2008 17:17, "Jeanette Hofmann" <jeanette@wzb.eu> wrote:

Hi Nick,

last year, 15.08.2007 16:22 you sent the following mail below to the euro-discuss list. It would be great if you could you let us know what has changed in the meantime. I hope you get better soon. best, jeanette

Re: [EURO-Discuss] Funding Request and Draft Agenda for EURALO Board meeting

ALS' are invited to send a single representative to ICANN meetings when the region that they are in is provided travel support.

At this point Europe is the only region which has regional officers who are not also ALS representatives. One could imagine that the invitation could be extended to allow those officers to attend as well.

On 15/8/07 14:45, "Jeanette Hofmann" <jeanette@wzb.eu> wrote:

...

...

Hi Nick, from what I understand only ALS get financial support for attending ICANN meetings. Is that correct? This would mean that several board members would either not attend regional meetings or pay for themselves. jeanette

Nick Ashton-Hart wrote:

...

My apologies for taking a few days to respond to this email. I¹ve been a bit under the weather (unwell). I¹ve taken the liberty of copying in Cheryl Langdon-Orr (ALAC chair) and the three ALAC representatives from EURALO given the importance of the email to planning overall...

On the first point, as those of you who have attended many ICANN meetings will know, it is pretty much impossible to ensure that all scheduling conflicts can be avoided in connection with an ICANN meeting. The Paris meeting is even more challenging, as it is one day shorter than the usual meeting since it ends on the Thursday instead of Friday. Having a EURALO meeting on Sunday wouldn¹t work as the ALAC are meeting that day ­ and on that day ALAC is meeting with the GAC at lunch, and the GNSO for breakfast (and members of EURALO would wish to attend these meetings I suspect). Saturday was chosen only after careful review of all options. You should know that there are always issues of the kind you mention with RALO GA planning so EURALO is far from the first to experience issues with scheduling. In fact, I believe that the last EURALO GA was split over three days due to scheduling problems.

With respect to travel support, the situation is that each ALS will be invited to send one representative with travel support provided by ICANN. Since no other region has received travel support on any other basis, it would unfairly prejudice the others to treat EURALO differently and provide more travel support for one region over any other. I can tell you that ensuring that telephonic remote participation that works well is a priority at the Paris ICANN meeting as internally the discussions about how this has not worked well previously have been taken to a higher level than was previously the case.

I hope this answers your questions even if it is not the answer that you might wish to receive.

On 12/04/2008 18:34, "William Drake" <william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch> wrote:

It sounds like it would have been good to check with people on scheduling before fixing a date.

Nick, could we please get definitive clarification of the funding issue raised today by Vittorio and Jeanette, and previously by Wolf, Karen, Annette, myself, maybe others? Somehow I'd thought it was resolved that there's no problem, but looking through my saved Euralo message folder I can't find a message that's actually from you to that effect. People need to know whether and how to plan...

Thanks

Bill

On 4/12/08 6:02 PM, "Vittorio Bertola" <vb@bertola.eu> wrote:

...

Wolf Ludwig ha scritto:

...

To the members of the EURALO board:

Dear all

According to our by-laws, we are supposed to have our first GA this year and the coming 32nd International Public Meeting of ICANN in Paris (from 22 to 26 June 08) offers an almost perfect opportunity for that. After a short discussion I had with Nick he already reserved Saturday, 21 June 08, all day for us. Thanks Nick!

I still don't know whether I'll get funding for Paris, but in any case I won't be able to get to Paris before the morning of the 22nd. Ciao,

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