On 11/01/2013 22:29, ICANN At-Large Staff wrote:

Please note that with the results of these votes, At-Large has reached a major milestone of surpassing 150 At-Large Structures! The current number of ALSes is 151.

151 ALS reached! Bravo! Congratulations to all of you who have reached out to new potential At-Large Structures. Outreach is hard work! Being present at the ICANN Booth at the worldwide IGF or ICANN meetings; visiting with the ICANN fellows during ICANN Meetings; reaching out at local IGFs; packing kilos of brochures in your luggage, sometimes at your own expense; writing and following-up with potential applicants. I know many of you are doing that, and are not necessarily thanked when an application comes through. So this message is to thank *you* for initiating the dialogue with our new members. At some point, most of us and our organizations were potential new members. How did it feel to join At-Large? How much help were you given by your new peers into becoming more active? I understand that in the 151 ALSes now listed, some are not as active as we would like them to be. So our work is to make sure that in-reach is as important as outreach and to get all ALSes to be as active as possible. My colleagues and I on the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) are always looking for new ideas to keep ALSes interested in At-Large's work so if you have an idea how to improve in-reach, please let me or the ALAC know and we'll see if we can implement it. Until now, a really limiting factor has been the funding of any outreach activity outside ICANN meetings. With the new ICANN Management Team in place, we are told that this is a new Season for ICANN. With the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) behind us, I believe that this is more than a new Season. It is a new Era. Why? Because this is the first time the multi-stakeholder system which the Internet operates by and which ICANN runs, was clearly challenged formally by another system, the multi-lateral system. Multi-lateralism is a segregated system where governments take decisions with other governments, listening to advice from the private sector and from civil society but keeping full control over the taking of decisions. On the other hand, a multi-stakeholder system takes the input from *all* stakeholders and searches for consensus to reach a decision. Most of the other Supporting Organisations (SO), Advisory Committees (AC) and Stakeholder Groups (SGs) in ICANN can build their support from common goals in their membership. On the other hand, as the part of ICANN attempting to reflect the views of the Internet End Users, it is harder to build a community on common goals. But we should have at least one common desire, which is to make the multi-stakeholder system work for ICANN, and we are an incredibly resourceful community! Yes - incredibly resourceful: we have a worldwide footprint in every continent (except Antarctica). We bring together an incredibly wide range of cultures and perspectives. We also bring a wide range of skills from all disciplines. We have members who have extensive contacts in governments and industry; members who shape policy; members who are in touch with their local community on a daily basis; members who were key to the Internet's success; members who work tirelessly a local and international level... and then they spend their spare time to volunteer in the At-Large process. Through the ALAC, we have the unique possibility of commenting on everything and anything that is ICANN-related, insofar as it relates to Individual Internet Users. That's pretty broad. So we need the help of *all* of our At-Large Structures to make sure the Interests of Internet Users are defended worldwide. So I appeal to you all to continue looking for new potential ALSes. I appeal to you all to get more involved in At-Large's work in ICANN. There is so much more that we can do - and that we need to do! Join Working Groups, for example: https://community.icann.org/x/loIi Review Policy documents and comment: https://community.icann.org/x/bwFO The clock is ticking on the multi-stakeholder model. You are given a voice to stop that clock. Let's use it before it's too late. Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond ALAC Chair