In connection with the recently-forward email from Jeanette, here is the response that I made to Bill’s points; it looks like my reply to Bill crossed with Jeanette’s forward of her reply to him :) ------ Forwarded Message From: Nick Ashton-Hart <nick.ashton-hart@icann.org> Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:43:41 +0200 To: William Drake <william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch>, Jeanette Hofmann <jeanette@wzb.eu> Cc: 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> Conversation: Draft agenda and planning for EURALO¹s 1st General Assembly in Paris Subject: Re: Draft agenda and planning for EURALO¹s 1st General Assembly in Paris Thanks awfully for your thoughtful response. I believe I see several misconceptions though. What I would say is that the fact that only ALSes get to travel has been the position for At-large since before I even became involved with ICANN. Whilst I understand that you could easily construe my sentence from many months ago as assent, anyone who has been to an ICANN meeting on travel support in the last two years would know that the default situation is what it is. With respect to non-ALS members of governance structures participating, I think it is important to remember that for the vast majority of participants in ICANN there is no travel support at all. Most other community members routinely work online and via telephone, on a continuing basis, throughout the year. Many, many ICANN participants do not meet their counterparts for more than a year, and many have never met at an ICANN meeting – but they continue to work on the issues they care about on a continuing basis. The Internet is the basis for working in ICANN. Face-to-face meetings are used to ‘close the deal’ on issues; the vast bulk of the work is done by telephone. Even in At-Large, every other region except EURALO manages to have monthly meetings, and are all increasingly working on a continuing basis, all by teleconference, like the rest of ICANN. EURALO will increasingly be asked – including by other members of At-Large – why they do not have any activity on their mailing lists, and why they do not regularly work on the issues that are important to them. As a European, I would not like to see these questions asked – and I also do not want to see EURALO looked upon as inactive or disengaged. I hope you understand that if the response of the leaders of EURALO when asked why the region is not active is “we are not engaged because we cannot meet face-to-face” it will not resonate with others nor will they find it persuasive. As to the standing of non-ALS people: this was discussed in the EURALO meetings in Lisbon last June. In fact, the direct participation of individuals was one of the most heated discussions during those meetings and I am sure it will occupy more time at the next meeting as I know feelings on both sides are strong. That said – as I have said before – if EURALO wishes to design travel support rules that are different from other regions that possibility exists. It has existed for many months now – the Secretariats first proposed this possibility at the Los Angeles meeting; unfortunately neither Wolf nor Jeanette attended the Secretariats meetings then but the notes on this and the other points of the conversations were available, and the topic was again brought up in New Delhi. The only issues with implementing a differential travel system is that it is fair to all within the region, and that across regions the various regimes are also fair. So, as you see, the regions can elect whom they wish to elect – they can and they have - and they can provide support to allow participation that is different too, but that does to be frank require that, in EURALO’s case, it would have to be active enough to discuss issues and come to an agreement on them, and then take that agreement to the other regions and work out any issues. I’m happy to discuss this with any of you via email or via telephone, as is Frederic, the new member of staff who will be devoting all his time to helping all the RALOs. On 17/04/2008 15:38, "William Drake" <william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch> wrote: Hi Nick, While this conversation has drifted off, I’d like to share a couple of closing thoughts on your decision. If as you say it is a matter of clear policy that “no region has an opportunity for non-ALS members to receive travel support to attend ICANN meetings,” 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 shouldn’t be a problem. I think most people would reasonably read “One could imagine that the invitation could be extended to allow those officers to attend as well” 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 we’d 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, wouldn’t 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 I’d obviously have said there’s 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 it’s 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 isn’t 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 “it would unfairly prejudice” 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. I’m 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. I’ve been a bit under the weather (unwell). I’ve 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 wouldn’t 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,

--

Regards,

Nick Ashton-Hart Director for At-Large Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Main Tel: +33 (450) 40 46 88 USA Tel: +1 (202) 657-5460 Fax: +41 (22) 594-85-44 Mobile: +41 (79) 595 54-68 email: nick.ashton-hart@icann.org Win IM: ashtonhart@hotmail.com / AIM/iSight: nashtonhart@mac.com / Skype: nashtonhart Online Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashtonhart

*********************************************************** William J. Drake Director, Project on the Information Revolution and Global Governance/PSIO Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva, Switzerland william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch *********************************************************** *********************************************************** William J. Drake Director, Project on the Information Revolution and Global Governance/PSIO Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva, Switzerland william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch *********************************************************** -- Regards, Nick Ashton-Hart Director for At-Large Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Main Tel: +33 (450) 40 46 88 USA Tel: +1 (202) 657-5460 Fax: +41 (22) 594-85-44 Mobile: +41 (79) 595 54-68 email: nick.ashton-hart@icann.org Win IM: ashtonhart@hotmail.com / AIM/iSight: nashtonhart@mac.com / Skype: nashtonhart Online Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashtonhart ------ End of Forwarded Message