I'm not at all sure, Jeanette, but its in the back of my mind that when that NARALO needs to make a policy statement, that the voices of the individuals are counted just the same as the ALSs. This, of course, does not apply to votes - I'm just talking over-all consensus here. Is this fair? Well, I'm not sure but as an ALS representative, I represent multiple people, not just my own opinion. Therefore, I do think that it should be given more weight. And people like Beau carry TONS more weight than me! So, I have no firm opinion on this - this is just my mind meanderings. D ________________________________ From: alac-internal-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of Jeanette Hofmann Sent: Thu 4/17/2008 1:51 PM To: Evan Leibovitch Cc: alac-internal@atlarge-lists.icann.org; alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org Subject: Re: [ALAC-Internal] [Fwd: Re: Draft agenda and planning for EURALO¹s 1st General Assembly in Paris] Hi, thank you for the explanation. What still amazes me though is that the At Large Membership doesn't provide "a home" for individual Internet users. No doubt, they are affected by ICANN's policies but they have no direct means to articulate their interests and concerns, unless they join an ALS, of course. Now doubt also, individual users form a large group out there on the net. Do you all regard this as a blind spot of ICANN structures and processes? Do you think things will stay like this or do you expect them to change some time in the future? Thanks, jeanette Evan Leibovitch wrote:

...

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 clarify:,

Within NARALO we solved this by allowing individual members, and enabling a pseudo-ALS for for them. That is, for the purposes of formal representation in the GA, the individual members of NARALO collectively have the status of one ALS and as such may select representatives for voting (or potentially travel). They can also stand for election for the Chair or Secretariat or ALAC rep.

We explicitly rejected the notion that an individual member must have the exact same status as a representative of a membership organization that has gone through the ALAC due diligence process. The intent, if I recall, was that active individual participants should be encouraged to get involved with like-minded larger groups that would then become ALSs. This would in turn increase participation beyond the individuals, which is a prime goal of the RALO/ALS process.

This approach did not please _everyone_, but we believed it struck a reasonable balance between ICANN goals and the awareness that not everyone who was interested in At-Large was part of an ALS. So far I believe this balance has worked well.

- Evan

_______________________________________________ ALAC-Internal mailing list ALAC-Internal@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac-internal_atlarge-lists.... ALAC Wiki: http://st.icann.org/alac At-Large Website: http://atlarge.icann.org <http://atlarge.icann.org/>